For those who have noticed, yes, this is a re-upload. The older version of this video had a LOT that was wrong, and it was not something I was proud about or comfortable having up on this channel. This new version has fixed all those errors, and I'm much happier with this one. Thank you so much to everyone who left comments on the old video pointing out the many problems with it and to everyone who reached out to me directly to voice their concerns. I'm always listening to y'all and value your thoughts. Cheers :)
Goes to show when getting called out about wrong / alterted information reallifelore will stay true to the fact that he will not give us false information when possible / mistakes. Mad respect to you man mad respect
Don't know if you found the answer to this, but you asked in the original video why they don't update the amtrak line, it's because amtrak doesn't own any of its tracks it leases it from private freight companies who have no interest in upgrading their lines as high-speed lines are useless for freight, that is why amtrak will never have high speed they need to build all new lines.
This whole exchange/interaction between these two channels was stunning to watch. Instead of having some beef or throwing mud, RLL said “oh shit my bad” after getting blown out of the water for like 30 minutes and went back to revise everything using that criticism, and Fisher’s response to this was “glad you fixed it, it’s much better now” instead of milking the controversy for views or youtube boxing.
Wow. I 100% respect you for taking it on the chin and going back to fix, rather than to dig your toes in. You care about getting it right versus being right. Which is super important fir a channel like this. Bravo! I only wish I could see my old comments on the last video to examine all the changes that were made, for science. But I am sure happy, this is a great improvement. 👍
The new video is still full of misinformation. He only fixed the mistakes he was specifically pointed to. All the rest of the misinformation he got from 5 minutes of googling is still there! This is a much trashier channel than I thought.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
The other factor is that the video that called him out was dead wrong on whether CA HSR is a good thing. It isn't. I'm all for HSR, just not for the stupid version of it.
This is a much better view of the issue. Good job taking the constructive criticism of your first video! Your videos always should have the high standards you first set.
If they actually finish it. It'll allow people to avoid the I-5 That's the big draw. People die on the I-5 because the fog can reduce visibility to practically nothing. It's scary just seeing the signs to gauge visibility. I really appreciate that you actually redid the video not enough people do that.
That'll disincentivize the purpose of using the i5 which you'll need to remove some lanes and retrofit those lanes into busways or metro rail (like in Northern Virginia, Washington D.C metropolitan area). If this becomes a main political issue over cars and expanding highways simply bc there's constant traffic jams, the potential for a complete Californian HSR will be inevitable; this will increase in demand in other states.
@@spookysenpai7642I'm pretty sure the section they're talking about is the grapevine, which is a rural mountain pass, not an urban freeway. The only place those metro and bus lines could possibly connect to would be Bakersfield, which will already be connected by the high-speed rail.
@@spookysenpai7642 they cant really "remove some lanes" on the I5 its a major thoroughfare for delivery trucks and it's only two lanes. part of the reason why people want a bullet train you can get stuck between two dueling trucks who refuse to move over for hours.
not only that but it's a nightmare of potholes and delivery trucks. I do the drive from Sacramento to L.A on the 5 about 6 times a year and your always getting stuck behind trucks trying to pass one another because it's a two lane freeway, or smashing into some pothole because the right lane is completely destroyed because of the high volume of truck traffic. the bullet train will be convenient in innumerable ways, not to mention make commuting from the bay to L.A or vice versa a real possibility not to mention reviving dieng cities in the central valley like Fresno turning them into real suburban options because you can now get employment in either the bay area or L.A two of the biggest job markets in the world, then take a calm little one hour train ride back to Fresno.
This is why I trust this channel. They realized they made some mistakes, took the criticism, removed the video, then uploaded a new more accurate video.
@@benrodir2 this shows that people make mistakes and that this Channel goes beyond others to correct mistakes. So if it stays up in this channel, i would argue it’s generally trustworthy. Nothing is 100% perfect so even trusted programs should still have be only part of your total information gathering
Well done for recognizing the shortcomings of your earlier video and taking the time to address them, not many youtubers go to the trouble, and most wouldn't even delete the original video!
I just watched a video from NotJustBikes and he said that the way we used to make transit was first the railroad then the development but if you propose now to make a train that goes no where people would laugh you out of the room. This really helped me understand how California's HSR is actually future proofing mass transit for new developments to be transit oriented before they even pop up. I love that forward thinking.
I live in Japan and several times had to "hop over" to Nagoya from Tokyo for a meeting. about 220 miles, less than a 2-hours ride with a train that leaves every 10-15 minutes. Don't even need to wake up particularly early for a 10am meeting in Nagoya and it is so, so much more convenient than flying. I hope California can pull this off and can reap huge societal and environmental benefits. Though by that time the Tokyo-Nagoya rail will be likely MagLev and will take abour 45 minutes :)
@@brentsummers7377 The high speed rail projects in the US are well funded, but the cost over runs drains them dry. Why can't we build them anything even close to a reasonable price?
@@Knight_Kin They are NOT well-funded are you kidding me??? The U.S. only gives enough to start, but does not provide a sustained funding source to actually finish any high speed railway project. But they're more than happy to destroy neighborhoods by building more highway lanes, and spend trillions on the military.
As someone is grown up in the valley hearing about the high-speed rail even with all the costs and how long it’s taken I still want them to make it. I’ve taken Amtrak it sucks if I could go back and forth quicker it would make life much easier
My respect for you has only grown, and grown a lot, for engaging with people’s feedback, taking stock of issues with the last video, and taking the effort and time to remake a video that would have taken a lot of work to make in the first place. Your commitment to presenting reliable, informative and enjoyable reports to us is really commendable. Power to you 🙌🏽
ye but i woudnt have let the "discount wendover" shit just slide by, he has ablost double the subs and got 27mil views compared to 7mil from wendover, so that's why i was just annoyed that he couldn't just make a constructive criticism video without the sh**ing on RLL's video...
@@FXVNDER ye thats a good thing, read what i said again, I'm pissed at the guy who couldn't make a criticism video without being a pice of s**t, I've been watching RLL for a hella long time now also isn't your pfp the one girl that dies.. or something really sad happens ... so like y 😂😂😥
as a native to CA, it is hard to imagine this being completed. in the sense that it seems too good to be true. I have spent many many hours of my life in a car traveling around the state. having this kind of rail system would be AMAZING
"I have spent many many hours of my life in a car traveling around the state. having this kind of rail system would be AMAZING" Well, you're learning this late, but you know, two American brothers invented this wondrous device a while back. It lets you fly through the air. It's been upgraded a lot and it goes at Mach 0.85 now. It passes wheel on rail HSR like the HSR is standing still.
@@cyclingtexas1670 "a train station is a lot more convenient than sitting two hours before a flight" Why are you doing that? Boarding starts 30 minutes before and security is 5 minutes with "clear" and 20 without. If you're there more than 40 minutes early when you have "clear", or you don't have clear and get there more than 50 minutes early, you're wasting your time. None of that makes up for 3 hours of your life that you wasted on the CAHSR that takes 4 hours to get to LA. It's even worse if you're going down to SD because as currently presented going down to SD would take another hour, whereas in a plane, they just open the throttle a little more and you still get there in about an hour. Their max cruising speed is over 500 mph so they're only taking an hour to get to LA because they want to burn less fuel. I've been on a flight from LA to San Jose that took only 45 minutes. Let's see CAHSR beat that (they can't beat one hour either). btw to get on a TGV, users on TripAdvisor suggest about 30 minutes before also. "going through security and waiting in long lines" Five minutes with "clear" and 20 without.
@@neutrino78x Lol, dude you keep trying to push this airline propaganda 😁😁😁 No one shows up less than 1.5 hours before their flights because that is a surefire way to miss your flight and get stuck for hours or sometimes days at the airport if it’s a rural place with few flights. This fantasy scenario isn’t even true for frequent fliers because you still want to get to your destination as a frequent flyer. Planes are nut busses! You don’t show up a few minutes before takeoff and expect to be allowed to board! Doors close 15 minutes before your flight. That’s literally the law. You have to walk through the airport and gond your gate which in any large airport is a feat. You may have to travel on a train between terminals to get to your gate like you do in Orlando for example. TSA lines can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour during busy times. And guess what, most people travel during the busy times. That’s why they’re busy! You need to find a place to park and take whatever train or shuttle from the parking lot to the terminals and then maybe take a train or another shuttle to your terminal. None of this crap takes 10 minutes. Everyone knows this and that’s why no one shows up any less than 1.5 hours before their flight.
@@TohaBgood2 "No one shows up less than 1.5 hours before their flights because that is a surefire way to miss your flight " If you want to waste your time, go ahead. I wouldn't get there that early. Also go to TripAdvisor and see what the users on there say about getting on TGV, they say to get there about 30 minutes early, which is when you want to get the airport. "ou don’t show up a few minutes before takeoff and expect to be allowed to board!" On Southwest you can. There's no assigned seating, so whatever seat is open you take it, as long as they're still boarding you're good. "TSA lines can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour during busy times." "CLEAR" is a thing. Sign up for it. I think it's like 200/year. Anyway, regardless of all of this, fact remains, CAHSR as currently designed, if ever completed, would be a 3.5-4 hour ride. You're just making up excuses for it being so slow. Vast majority of people who want to go from SF all the way down to LA or SD just fly. It's cheap, it's fast.
I am glad that RealLifeLore managed to explain the poverty here in the San Joaquin Valley. Having lived in the valley my entire life, I have seen thousands of homeless people living on the streets, thousands of people living in poverty and several murders in my home area. A lot of the points in this video clearly explain many of the problems that we in the valley face that the costal urban centers barely have to endure. I am also surprised that my home city of Stockton get mentioned in this video.
San Diego and former Santa Cruz resident here, the homeless problem is everywhere. (And also the murder) Also totally agreed with the Stockton shout-out
Just build more housing and transit lines. Screw with the NIMBYs trying to keep housing supply as low as possible to keep their property values artificially high.
Have you seen Skid Row in LA? A lot of these costal urban centers are so expensive people are just on the streets with no help. They can’t even move down to the Central Valley.
He actually listened to Alan Fisher’s Video and put the extra effort to update his old video. This is the ideal response to feedback; looking into and seeing what information was incorrect in his old video and improving upon it or correcting it
@@jeffreypierson2064 Not really. He still has a mostly wrong information here. His depth of research is just laughable. He literally grabs the very first piece of misinformation on every subject. This "correction" is a very slight improvement over the previous dumpster-fire attempt but it's still utter trash in terms of accuracy. It's just slightly less on-fire trash this time. This is an entertainment channel. You shouldn't expect actual information here. That would be like trying to learn world history from Ancient Aliens.
There are sooooooo many mistakes in this "correction" it's crazy. Actually crazy. He only corrected the precise things that Alan mentioned and missed literally all the rest of the mistakes. This guy is such a joke.
I feel like it's important to note that the interstate highway system has been completely rebuilt a few times since the 1950s. The cost of maintenance is the entire cost of rebuilding the highway (minus initial land purchase), the cost of rail maintenance once foundations are seismic stabilized and tunnels dug is much less. There's a reason the Midwest and Northeast have the joke about there being 3 seasons: "Summer, Winter, and Road Construction". People don't notice the inconvenience or cost as much because the highway system gets fixed in chunks of a few miles at a time, every few years. Or a big mixmaster project in a few cities at a time all over the country. The reality is that the highway system is nickel and diming us, it's also built for leisure, not large scale passenger travel and freight. Route 66 and the great American road trip still has appeal, but mostly a road trip is something that is "in the way" of you getting to your actual destination. Because of this, people also view those highways as more important than they need to be. When I drive to visit family, my car mostly sits while the people who live there drive me around. Same as when I fly, but people have a connection to the imagined flexibility of the car.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
"The reality is that the highway system is nickel and diming us, it's also built for leisure, not large scale passenger travel and freight. " Actually, it was built so the US Army could run military vehicles across the USA at higher speeds than without the pavement. "When I drive to visit family, my car mostly sits while the people who live there drive me around. Same as when I fly, but people have a connection to the imagined flexibility of the car." Everybody flies from SF to LA. Just look at the traffic map on 511, look at it during rush hour California time. You'll see there's a big blob of red for LA, and lots of red in the Bay Area too, but the three highways that go vertically between those areas are all green. That's because the traffic issue is WITHIN the Bay Area and WITHIN Los Angeles/San Diego, not between.
@@GEnghis559 You can find RLL's original video re-uploaded with just a quick search on youtube. It definitely seemed that RLL had a more critical take on the railway in the first upload, received some backlash and then softened his criticism of the railway.
Great job with the update. While funding is hard to find, it's not like California is not flush with cash right now in terms of tax revenue. California as well, not really getting any private investment on the project is a good thing, as the project does not need to "break even" in terms of construction costs. They can continue to fund development under the state budget. All California really needs to do is break even on transportation, maintenance and staffing costs per person which is an important point to note. Charging $50 for the San Francisco to LA route is still viable even if it "loses money" in terms of breaking even with construction costs which is important to note. For California, all that really matters is ridership, which they can boost with subsidized pricing, and maybe taking a small cut above the break even costs. The cost of the project doesn't really matter as California does have the government revenue to continue development.
Plus, the experience gained in building the CHSR will allow workers to specialize, and that will hopefully lead to more HSR projects across the country at a lower cost and faster speed.
Subsidizing some of the costs for riders is what is needed for sure, it’s not like it’ll be something that is going to be taking as much of the cost as time goes on as ridership increases too
Really glad you’ve made this video, and looked to make your content better with the re-upload. Thank you @RealLifeLore for bringing important topics to the forefront, especially when it’s something that relates to my home
Thank you for re-uploading this video. You have given CAHSR the time and effort it deserves (if only the feds agreed). As an Electrical Engineer in California who has worked on Acela, I love the CAHSR project and want to see it completed. It hurts seeing journalists fail to cover the details of this situation correctly. You clearly recognized your mistake and corrected it. Your integrity has yielded one more subscriber.
Why should the rest of the USA fund a train in the richest state in the nation? Very regressive for such a progressive state isn't it? If California wants it so bad then they should pay for it themselves.
@@Bibitybopitybacon 1) Every state utilizes a combo of federal/state funds for transp. projects (Interstate and city highways for example). Other states get federal funding for their projects there's no reason to single out California. 2) It's estimated that 'fixing' the housing crisis in CA would put $7k+ into EVERY Americans pocket (even if you don't live in CA!) through increased economic activity. This is because, as it stands currently, the growth of CA's economy is happening faster than housing development for a variety of factors. Completeing CAHSR "Unlocks" Real Estate in criminally underfunded and poorer communities who are ready and willing to have commuters move (see Frenso, Bakersfield). Moving these workers into areas like Silicon Valley and LA turns these classically agricultural cities into 'feeder cities' with lower rents, allowing young workers to move to CA for their careers and have a good start without battling for limited housing as it currently stands.
@@Bibitybopitybacon The rest of the U.S. probably wants the housing crisis in California fixed, right? Building single family homes is not the answer, mixed use development with rapid transportation is. This is the first step.
@@gnnascarfan2410 I keep seeing this answer and it makes no sense. How is this rail going to fix housing in in California? You can't commute every day on it from the central valley. The prices of tickets is going to be so hight commuting on this thing isn't going to be practical. California's insane zoning rules are clearly an issue with the lack of affordable housing. Something this train does nothing for.
I love this new narration, it's so much more honest and nuanced, and I LOVED how you were far more caring and sympathetic to the people of the Central Valley and Palmdale. I noticed, and I loved it! (Also I noticed how you correctly pronounced Merced. I love you, sir.) As always, the landowners of California are screwing over the rest of California. There were only a couple small errors still present. 1. The animation at 0:47 is the same animation that was used in the previous video. It's incorrect. No one takes the 1 from San Francisco to LA. It's a scenic route, good for tourists, but you specifically mentioned a "typical trip" and that's not typical at all. A typical trip is on the 5. Through the west side of the Central Valley. 2. The San Joaquin Valley is not the most impoverished part of the state, even though it is close. East California, including Owens Valley through Baker and Barstow and down to Imperial Valley are far more impoverished, because they have all the systemic issues of the Central Valley with no water to make up for it. The Los Angeles Aqueduct was built to siphon off that water from Owens Valley. The HSR is not planned to be built to East California. All in all, the progress for the HSR is disappointing, and I'm not a typically impatient person. This new video highlights the ACTUAL problems, and I appreciate it.
Another tiny mistake, but it looks like they mislabeled San Jose as Gilroy. Or if they meant to put Gilroy rather than San Jose, why label Gilroy instead of San Jose? Seems weird.
Ermmm, 9 hours and 5:50? From where to where? I don't remember the last time SF-LA took me less than 7 hours over the 5. That's just not a realistic amount of time even if you don't stop for gas at all. I guess in the middle of the night it's possible, but even then there's sometimes road work on the 5.
@@hotbobbysauce950 Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe if you drive from the very outer northern edge of the LA area to the outer southern/western edge of the Bay Area that's kinda realistic. But most people don't live at the edge by definition 😁
The previous CHSRA leaders were also very incompetent and borderline corrupt. They overhauled their board recently and it seems like just some solid large investments into this project would boost confidence immensely. I think now is the time to boost funding and send construction into a new gear, because the SF electrification will be done soon, and connecting the valley to SF alone would be a major win, especially with how many Bay Area residents are already moving out there. The LA segment is going to definitely be a challenge, and the one I'm most worried about, but it'll remain to be seen how it'll get down here. I think a wild card is Brightline West. If they can finally get a train from at least Rancho Cucamonga to Vegas, I think that would greatly boost morale and faith in trains down here in Southern California, and if they roll with an extension to Palmdale, I could really see private investors begin to jump into CAHSR. This project finally has some footing, not much, but some to really get rolling and now should be the team CA throws some major $$$ at it and build the confidence it needs to get this done. And yes, a majority of Californians still support it, and really want an alternative way to get from LA to the Bay or the valley.
"and if they roll with an extension to Palmdale, I could really see private investors begin to jump into CAHSR. " Nah. The route is still stupid. I do think private enterprise might build a train here, but it would have to be on the median of I-5, and it would be at their own expense. I applaud what Brightline is doing. And Brightline is doing it at their own expense and going down the median of the highway. I agree, if it is successful, they or another private company might build something up I-5. But it's for private enterprise because we already have an existing high speed vehicle that gets from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles in 45-60 minutes. It's called a Boeing 737.
Not "borderline", the entire project has been textbook corruption from the start. It was never actually intended to be completed. The overruns are a feature, not a bug. Those hundreds of billions didn't evaporate.
@@neutrino78x I-5 would completely skip the major cities of the central valley, in particular Fresno, which is the 5th largest city in the state. Bigger than Sacramento. There's a reason that CA-99 carries so many people. I-5 was specifically made to NOT serve those cities, and act as a bypass. Because, as you point out, a train is not a plane. Some people will be taking the train from SF to LA, but others from SF to Fresno, Bakersfield to LA, etc. There will be many city pairs rather than just people traveling from one end to the other. It can do things that planes can't. Extension to Palmdale is important because that allows them to connect to the conventional tracks there. Once that connection is made, they can run hybrid trains all the way from LA to SF and Sacramento, using the conventional tracks at either one, while the rest of the route is getting built out.
@@daverohrich8518 Yeah, HBO's True Dective's S2 shows how the corruption works where the glorified land squatters get in before the gov't is forced to buy the land. Economic stimulus, er I mean transfers, at it's worse with many at all levels in on it.
Thanks for taking the time to redo the video. It's really hard to admit a mistake, and it takes a lot of courage. I look forward to continue watching your content, and I hope the best for you.
It seems to me that they should've prioritized building segments of the rail between the commuter suburbs of San Francisco and LA first and then slowly extended to the next one and then the next until you actually could connect the two.
this seems like a good idea, but it's important to remember a two things: 1) some of the closest commuter cities to either region already have connection to their city centers through CalTrain in the North and MetroLink in the south 2) the segments of HSR that cross through these regions are the more challenging ones to build The Central Valley was chosen as a starting point because environmental clearances were easiest to get there and cleared first, building there would amount to mostly building over flat land (which is a lot easier than dealing with the issue of getting through the mountains on either side of the valley), and building this segment first would, as the video notes, actually enable "rail" travel between SF and LA, just including slower routes north of Merced and an unfortunate bus connection below Bakersfield. It was a sort of strategic piece to demonstrate how useful linking the cities could be by offering a slower variant while the final one was being worked on. Also, it's useful to remember that they are still doing things in other segments while this is being worked on. For instance, the aforementioned CalTrain lines actually serve as the end of the HSR route, so they needed to be electrified, and that project is currently nearing completion, meaning that long before HSR is a thing SF Bay Area residents will get to enjoy faster commutes on the electrified CalTrain network.
@@jonahbedouch You forgot the most important reason construction started in the Central Valley... The only way the initial political authorization was going to happen in CA was if the project appeared to have benefits for places outside the Bay Area & Los Angeles basin. Democratic politicians up and down the Central Valley threw their support behind it on the promise of plenty of pork-barrel spending and union jobs in their communities that would come BEFORE more spending in the big cities.
@@robertherman1146 There isn't a single excuse there since there's nothing to excuse. The central valley segment is the only segment that made any remote amount of sense to start with. The north segment of the system is already entirely served by rail, and in spite of that many of the delays have come entirely from protesters in San Mateo. The south segment is so garishly expensive that with every dollar the agency has ever been given they'd only get about a quarter of the way through it. On top of that, all of the non-expensive parts to build (the area near LA) is already served by rail, and people along the way to Bakersfield still refuse to sell HSR land (there's something like 30 miles of alignment they still don't own since they refuse to eminent domain). The only remotely affordable segment was also the only segment that actually doesn't repeat existing service, provides a link to a historically underserviced region of California, and still provides a relatively strong transit backbone. It's literally common sense.
@@jonahbedouchSlight correction: the Central Valley segment is already served by the Amtrak San Joaquins. You are pretty much correct on everything else, but the Central Valley segment absolutely already has rail.
This was a very good reupload, I think you did the right thing, even if it wasn't really economically beneficial to you. Much more nuanced explanation of the situation. Thank you.
As a Californian, my biggest gripe with high speed rail is how the cost is used as a political tool. For a state with over $3 trillion in GDP, $105 billion isn't as much as its made out to be. Out of $3000 billion, $105 billion isn't much considering our long term emissions and auto usage goals. Make the danged thing and people will use it!
I will definitely use it. Going to LA is super time consuming so I rarely get down there, but if I can buy a (relatively) cheap train ticket and get down there in like 2 and a half hours, I’d go down there wayy more often.
@@majura3743 even if you could replace the 7 hour drive with a 3 or 4 hour trip, I'd take it. I hate dealing with planes: show up at least an hour early for security (which make the 90 min flight closer to a 3 hr PITA), have everything you're bringing thoroughly inspected, and pay for the privilege with an extra $10 to $20. Give me a quick and easy train to LA and I'll probably go there.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
As an Angelino... this video is better and more accurate than the previous one. Thank you for correcting most of the problems with the older video. People often forget that California is bigger than the entire of Japan and that the land heres is privately owned and expensive unlike in China where the government can just take it from you. And our politicians are nothing like the European ones so yeah... it's a nightmare to get anything done right.
Thank you for taking the time to look back at the last video, as a person from Fresno, I love that the issue of poverty was touched up on this video, and I hope you keep up the good work man!
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There’s no true freedom of movement without public transit and trains are absolutely vital in this regard. Between the Bay Area and LA right now, there’s only three land connections: Hwy 101, Interstate 5, and Hwy 1. Hwy-1 is the scenic route built along CA’s sheer Pacific cliffs and is at constant risk of collapsing into the ocean. Both the 101 and 5 are bottlenecks that get completely blocked when someone gets into an accident due to sleepy driving under the heat of the Central Valley. High speed rail is much safer, faster, and an overall critical solution to resolving the ever increasing traffic that ensnarls both the Bay Area and LA. Cars may get you anywhere, but in dense urban environments, no matter how wide the roads become, congestion just gets worse with more people, and that’s all before parking and accidents are taken into consideration, both of which are hugely problematic in areas with big populations. Completion of this high speed rail is vital to CA’s long term growth, and I’m all for it. Foreigners (and natives) living in the EU, China, and Japan can easily get around with their massive rail network quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. You can’t say the same about foreigners (and non-driving natives) living in the US, who need to get a driver’s license and buy/lease a car before they can do anything on their own. This also applies to kids and teens.
So let's pay for a super expensive system...so "foreigners" can get around fast? How absurd. You sound like someone hired by the HS Rail. This nonsense about Hwy-1 ...at constant risk of collapsing into the ocean! The sky is falling. True freedom at risk! Did you miss the part where there's planes and cars and trains already? Just not overpriced ones just for the Elite. And "foreigners" .smh
I mean, there IS freedom of movement without them. It's just grueling and expensive AND/OR time-consuming, whether by car, by horse-drawn wagon, or on foot :P But just like freedom of speech is underpowered without equitable access to communication technology (be it by postal service, by telephone or telegram, or by internet connection), freedom of movement is underpowered without equitable access to transportation technology. There is a point where freedom meets equity optimally, and societally it is in all our best interests to find it, and in _this_ country particularly, we need to find it _yesterday!_ P.S. re: the rest of what you say, I broadly agree, and I'm not contradicting any of it.
High speed rail is critical for any hope of humanity's future sustainability. You are correct - high speed rail is much safer, faster and better solution than more people in individual vehicles on highways pushing themselves through long and exhausting travel trying to stay alert. The solutions are out there, but we need a major system change in order for it to actually come to fruition. It can happen, but people need to realize the system is the sickness and we can't have a sustainable future without system change. A good alternative to look into is an 'economic calculation in a natural law resource based economy.'
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
I think this video shows that you are a very good RUclipsr, you took constructive criticism and took the time to remake a video so you have quality and no misinformation
one criticism i'd make is at 13:03 you compare the cost of land acquisition between California and China. but in China, the government can just seize the land if they want to, and the consequences for defying the government are severe. That makes it a lot easier for governments to plan out their transit routes. They can just push out any people who are in the way. I would add that california should have acquired all the land along the route before starting the project, to keep such costs down. but now they should use eminent domain to acquire the land and pay a reasonable rather than inflated compensation to the landowners
It really is so depressing. California definitely has so many issues to be sure, but you can't fault them for wanting to push for something so ambitious for the public good. Which is why it would be a shame if other people saw these severe hiccups due to issues specific to California, and assume that it's not even worth trying anywhere else.
Other states like NY need to look at California as an example of incompetent leadership and buit HSR right instead of seeing it as HSR sucks (because the technology is good, its just Cali is notorious for its incompetence which has caused water shortages, blackouts, and insane street homeless crisises)
I wonder if Californian leaders ever looked at smaller nations like Saudi Arabia that collaborated with the French and Spanish engineers in Europe to provide either the TGV or AVE rolling stocks to them or even Japanese Shinkansen, if they were able to do that instead of doing it themselves from scratch I felt like there would of been a true HSR in California by now because at the end of the day they really just need funding and project done and no other Barriers faced by the investors who doubted the project at the beginning. By then after they see the reliability of the rolling stocks and train units it’ll give them a great hope to actually get the entire project done. That’s what the NorthEast did with the Acela Express and Amtrak by allowing to purchase from the reliable SNCF French rail makers, sure the Northeast Corridor’s nearly 460 mile line from DC to Boston doesn’t go Truly High Speed all the way due to much of the rails path designed ages ago therefore making it not designed for HS, it’s a lot better than Zero connection and much much faster than planes. Amtrak is already out with a bunch of new rolling stock of modern high speed trains from France
The fact that California is even trying to solve issues and move to a sustainable future is what sets them apart from the majority of states who prefer to do nothing. When this system is fully operational, no matter how much it costs, it will be a complete game changer
As a Californian in his late 30s, I am very angry that high-speed rail has been so botched from inception, and that I possibly won't see it ever completed in my lifetime.
As a Spaniard in his mid 20s. Relax, it'll be fine. Here's the thing, as you can see from this very video, nowadays we're one of the world's references when it comes to HSR, inded having the second largets HSR network only behind China, and one of if not the most economically efficient too. And yet... I remeber when AVE first started. I remember TV lambasting its issues, calling it a failed experiment, claiming that Talgo would rule the rails for ages to come and high speed traffic would be done exclusively by plane for the foreseeable future. I remember the failed stations, the corruption, the ineptitude. And I assure you, behind every successful HSR system there's a similar story. HSR requires a lot of government collaboration, which is terrible at the begining because politicians are shit at the needed skillsets. It's normal for it to struggle. If we could get it right in a decade or so, so can you, I believe in you, don't give up.
@@thespanishinquisition4078 I always feel super weird when I have to tell people about the issues the other projects are/were having! These jerks are literally forcing me to lambast HSR projects that I am a big fan of to prove that we need to finish our own! Love the Spanish HSR network BTW! You scored big as a country by getting it! Despite all the issues and delays and budget overruns, in the end everyone is constantly praising Spain's HSR network. One is led to believe that it just "poofed" into existence all perfect one day! 😁😁😁 Everybody wants the benefits but no one wants to put in the work that you put in for all those years!
I was gonna joke about it but I respect RLL for re-uploading with edits after Alan’s absolute roast of a video. It’s always important that educational youtubers correct their mistakes and that people learn not to take these channels as gospel
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
This bullet train is one giant money laundering operation. It will never be completed. The billions in cost overruns are being funneled through back channels into the coffers of the California Democrat political machine.
At first I thought I had Deja Vu, but there are some surprising changes in here compared to the older video. Great job on taking a step back and improving on the previous video!
Building in CA, the deepest blue of all the States is tough! I have a friend, his 9 year old wanted to build a model car, after applying for the proper permitting, background checks, sourcing prop 65 compliant glue, a no VOC chemical extraction booth, proof of proper training to use an exacto knife signed and notarized by the chief of police, OSHA training and so on. A homeless person high on meth broke into their house and stole it 4 hours after being released from jail for assault with a deadly weapon. The police found him high of course, unsuccessfully trying to huff the glue, with meth on him but since the model was only worth $750 there was nothing they could do and he wasn't arrested.
As a Stocktonian, I appreciate the due diligence you put into this reupload. Your work has always been incredible, although I do miss the Toyota Corolla comparisons lol
Car companies do not want their products compared to high-speed rail because they do not want to compete with it in North America. Why else would you think modern life on this side of the Atlantic orbits so heavily around the automobile? It is _king_ here.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Good job on taking the critique/criticism(?) very well! Not only did you pull the original video within 24 hours of Alans, but you surprised a lot of us by remaking it! Good man!
9:49 the interstate is a triumph of reducing cost by standardising design and other project aspects across the nation. Too bad the same effort wasn't put in for trains or public transit (eg mainland Chinese metros). Also too bad how many us cities are slashed or garrotted by urban freeways
Yeah, the problem is that we don't build any trains so there's nothing to standardize (almost). Amtrak is making strides though. It's sad that Amtrak's success is so widely ignored. It's basically reached breakeven just before the pandemic! Given that Amtrak is saddled by Congress with incredibly expensive money-losing long-distance routes, I'd say that Amtrak is doing amazingly well. If we invested some strategically money in short to medium Amtrak routes, we could have a really nice inter-urban and commuter rail system in many places in the country. Maybe then we'd be able to even start building new routes and start standardizing some.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Interstate construction reduced costs in no small part by mainly buying up land where the poorest and most politicallly disenfranchised people lived... in other words, it bulldozed black neighborhoods so white suburban commuters could get downtown quicker. That's not something to strive towards.
@@lifeinhd4053 Well, that was limited to the urban areas. The actual Insterstates were built with incredible federal backing and benefits for its users - something railways don’t experience
I don’t understand the objection to including the 300,000+ residents of the Palmdale and Lancaster area. These communities were left behind by I-5. When planning a project like this, you don’t just get out a ruler and draw a straight line between point A and point B on a map. You would obviously want to include as much connectivity between communities as reasonably possible. Cost overruns and delays are not ideal, but not unique to CA. The Tokyo-Nagoya project costs have hit $50b for the 220 mile route, inflating 27% from initial estimates. That’s $230m/mile. CA’s $110b figure is the total estimate for the entire 500 mile route, which is $220m/mile. The price for the initial route is about a quarter of that (the more urban and mountainous segments will be costly). Of course, the Japan project is for a maglev. CA’s max speeds will only reach 70% of its speed. So more bang for the buck there. My point is that delays and overruns are par for the course with these projects, especially considering this is the first such project in the Americas, so it’s to be expected. One more thing that bugged me was at 1:00. The SF to LA drive is going to take you much longer than 6 hrs if you take the coastal highway as you show in your graphic. Probably pushing 10 hrs going that way. Small detail, I know. Glad you fixed the more glaring errors from before!
My dad has a friend who owns some property in Shafter and when he was asked about buying his property for the railway he told them to contact him again when they are about a mile away
That's the difference between this and China. In China if you're in the way of a public works project they will just build it on top of you and put you in prison if you resist.
Great improvement, as a Cali resident I really appreciate the update. The first video got me a little frustrated because I know you could do better. Thank you for this.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
I appreciate the tone of this much more just 3 minutes in. There’s a lot of problems building in this country, but we need to build. When this thing is finished it will transform the region and hopefully we can learn from our mistakes for future projects.
@@bergonius like how giving people and businesses money for free during the pandemic turned out so great? you cant give people money for nothing because then the money is not respected, it has no value. you always have to have strings attached. its better to have the people clean the parks and rivers and plant trees than to just give the money for free
"When this thing is finished" It's not getting finished. The Governor already stated there shall be no more construction beyond the initial operating segment (Merced to Bakersfield) because we don't have an extra 100 billion in the budget. "it will transform the region" How so? We already have a high speed means of transportation between Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Jet aircraft. It only takes 45-60 minutes, as opposed to 4 hours for CAHSR as currently planned.
The integrity, maturity and grace you showed in fixing the issues with this video is so refreshing and reassuring to see on this platform. Outstanding, well done.
Meanwhile, here on Vancouver Island, we have no more passenger train service at all. Our one railway, the E&N, has deteriorated to such an extent that running passenger services on it is no longer safe, so we are pretty much stuck with the car, and it will most likely remain that way for a _long_ time.
Love your videos! Couple tiny corrections, as I live in DC - "Acela", pronounced "ah-SEH-la" and your graphic showing 2:45 between DC/Boston is wrong - it's 2:20 from DC-NY but still 8-9 depending on the train/stops to Boston. and you're right, it only hits 140-150 mph for like 20 minutes, it really needs its own dedicated tracks (and lower fares). Other countries have figure out highspeed rail, I wish the US could!
Honestly, I love that I can tell what you changed compared to your previous version. And not exclusively the pronunciation of "Merced" which I completely understand as I've only lived in LA for a few years. Thanks for just being a consistently great video maker
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
I really appreciate you redoing this video, the new one is way more balanced, complete and informative. One of the more exhaustive CA HSR explainer videos I've seen so far.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have family in Orange County and San Diego. So I can attest to the long drives there (6-9 hours depending on whether you take the more direct I-5 or the more scenic 101) and miserable traffic especially around LA. I am strongly in favor of a high speed rail system here, and remember voting for it back in '08. Yes, I get that it's expensive, but it's an investment I'm confident will pay off once completed. That and I just want to be able to visit family without dealing with airport security or hours of driving and traffic.
Hi, there, you're one of the few commenters who's been in an automobile from San Francisco to Southern California and knows how difficult it is to fight traffic. The rest of the commenters don't know what it's like to feel like driving between two cities fast, but only to have a choice of watching traffic on the "free" way move like a turtle.
"I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have family in Orange County and San Diego. So I can attest to the long drives there (6-9 hours depending on whether you take the more direct I-5 or the more scenic 101) and miserable traffic especially around LA. " Minera you know, there is this new thing they invented, it's called an airplane, and it gets you from the Bay Area to OC/SD a lot faster than HSR would.
@@neutrino78x not really. You have to go through all of the airport and get their very early for this and they rarely bring you to a developed area of the city. HSR often start as the central part of the city but things tend to build around it unlike airports.
@@skygge1006 "You have to go through all of the airport and get their very early for this and they rarely bring you to a developed area of the city. " None of that is true. I go from the Bay Area to Los Angeles several times each year. From the time I step out of the bus onto the airport in San Jose to the time I'm at the terminal waiting for the boarding process is less than 10 minutes. And you know, notice how you have to invent all these delays for air travel, to make excuses for trains, BECAUSE TRAINS ARE TOO SLOW. You know what, forget your stupid excuses man. You have to travel to both unless you live right next to the train station. So the time starts when I'm sitting in the airplane and you're sitting in the plane, ok. The bottom line dude, as currently planned the CAHSR is going to take at least 3 hrs and 5 minutes, that's if you go by the numbers they put in the 2022 business plan, and a plane only takes an hour. Nobody is going to say "you know, I could get there an hour, but instead of doing that, I want it to take three times longer." Like in Europe, the only people riding this would be tourists. Locals would continue to fly. SF to LA isn't like the NEC where most people drive small distances within the corridor. Here, most people are going from end of the corridor to the other, and it's just too far for trains, especially wheel on rail.
I have family up and down the state that sometimes I only see once or twice a year because of how long the drives are, making that trip more than once a week or even a month is rough.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Dude love that you re-evaluated the issue and your old video! I really believe public transit is a worthy investment, the only problem being we've designed most of our area for cars. I'm sure if we actually tried this it would be a big step towards a more sustainable way of travel. If we can dump billions into military and highways, we can build an HSR system. Correcting the publics' view of public transit would help I'm sure. Also multiple stops would be good, if it went to just a few cities less people would use it
Once again, a master of your craft. Because, only a master can accept criticism. For, in that, he realizes that there's always something new to learn. U da bomb RLL!
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
Sir. You are breaking RUclips law by not doubling down on mistakes and being belligerent about said mistakes. Joking! I appreciate you doing this, truly. So much respect for your ethos, pathos and logos. Again, just awesome.
Thank you for the updated facts, yes, but can I say I'm just happy you pronounced Merced correctly? 😭 Mer-ked was killing me in the previous version, haha
The California HSR is so cursed that even attempting to create a video about it will cause the author & creator(s) of the video to be plagued by it being over budget, under performing, and requiring extensive rework to obtain the desired product.
Would love to hear about your process in making this decision similar to what CGP Grey did on his reupload about trident missiles. Lotta respect. This video is much better.
A good railway will keep people who don't want to drive off the streets and let those who need to/want to have more space to drive, and less chance of causing an accident!
I'd love to see something like this on the east coast. Connect Boston to New York, to Philadelphia, to D.C., to Raleigh or Charlotte, to Atlanta, to Jacksonville and Miami. It would seem that this would be able to link up to the acela line that you mentioned.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
@@electrictroy2010 public infrastructure is never supposed to make profit in itself. Every public road is putting the state into debt, that's the point. The profits (socially and economically) of public infrastructure are then seen elsewhere, as better connectivity leads to social and economic development.
I think that the 22bn segment from the Central Valley to San Francisco will likely be completed. The segment between Blossom Hill Caltrain station and the San Francisco Transit center will most likely need to be upgraded for future Caltrain service. This means that infrastructure like new passing tracks, an upgraded station in San Jose, and grade separations will likely occur without High Speed rail funds. Between Blossom Hill and Gilroy the land is flat and easy to build on like in the Central Valley. But the challenge is obviously the 25 miles across the mountains between Gilroy and the Central Valley where it’s estimated to cost between 7-10 billion for a tunnel. I think that it’s likely that the project will connect San Francisco to Bakersfield in 10 years but no Los Angles.
That Caltrain segment is already getting upgraded to hsr/electrification and it’s i haven’t seen anyone actually cover this. Down in LA union station rail alignments are under reconstruction for metro adjustments and HSR as well. So in reality it’s San Jose to Merced that needs building to complete HSR to SF and multiple projects are happening simultaneously than people give them credit for.
@@nayhboseguera1774 although local agencies are upgrading los angles Union station and the station in Anaheim, they are not upgrading the corridor between the two which I don’t get. It takes around 50 minutes for Metrolink trains to go between Anaheim and Los Angles currently. Which is just shameful for two cities that are only 25 miles apart. The people in charge of the transportation systems in LA and Orange County should have definitely invested in upgrading this corridor so it has more tracks so HSR gets its own set and Metrolink/Amtrak gets its own set separate from freight, full grade separation so trains can operate at higher speeds around 125mph, and upgraded junctions so different systems don’t wait for eachother. I am truly baffled by the lack of investment in Metrolink and the over investment into LA Metro, good commuter rail plays a huge part in cutting traffic.
As much as I respect RealLifeLore for reuploading this video with corrected information, I have an equal amount of disdain for those who used this situation to make exaggerated claims about RealLifeLore's credibility, claiming his content is unresearched and copy-pasted from sources like Wikipedia.
You can still see a number of inaccuracies in his other videos though. While it's good he's taken feedback and fixed this one which I can't deny being a good thing. Its worth noting he's still a creator based around entertainment. So it's likely in his best interest to create broad, incorrect statements to keep people watching and making ad revenue. Edit: he also doesn't provide any sources. Makes me wonder where he gets this information.
@@spyczech And Alan Fisher actually includes sources. Personally I have found Wendover videos very good, but the last one about the budget railway got me thinking about how his version didn’t totally reflect the reality
The very slow pace that California is making on high speed rail is a warning sign for the rest of the country. Any high speed railway project in the USA will get super expensive and move at a very slow pace. California is currently the only state building high speed rail right now, but it is going very slow. Texas and possibly Florida are considering high speed rail but neither of them have started yet, and I predict their high speed rail projects will move even slower then California's high speed rail.
If Texas and Florida actually decide to fund high speed rail I expect those project to move considerably faster. Those states are notorious for cutting corners, plus they have favorable geography.
@@jasond5232 Oh yeah I guess you're right about that. Also unlike California they don't have to deal with the thief of the land (The BofLM), which mainly targets western states.
Texas should do better because it's a private company doing it at their own expense which is how these things should be done. Airplanes are far superior for high speed transportation between urban areas in the USA, Canada and Australia simply because of the vast distances involved. It would take the TGV 16 hours to go from Silicon Valley to New York, whereas a plane can do it in five or six hours. Same for SV to LA/SD....you can fly there in an hour. There's no need for this train.
@@neutrino78x Airports and air traffic control systems don't get built by private companies at their own expense. I don't see how you expect trains to do that. To be like an airline, the TRAIN would be privately owned but the tracks and stations would be built by the government.
Good on you bro, i almost never ever comment on anything but i did happen to catch a separate video counter pointing out everything from your first video and in all honesty i was never gonna watch any of ur videos again. I figured if all ur stats and subject matter was so flawed on this one video, it was likely that all ur videos were plagued with the same research. Thank God cuz i like ur format and ur narrating
Man, If anyone can drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 6 hours (and not just to the "entering Los Angeles county" sign on the grapevine), I would like to hire you to transport some very important blueprints for a pllanet destroying weapon in a Galaxy far far away
Much props.... Love this channel even more. This shows your watchers that by you you listen to constructive advice and made appropriate changes. I wish more people were adult enough to admit mistakes. Great job! And great videos!
California has two senators. Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts have two each. Not exactly a surprise that federal funding is so much better for Acela. Though there are other factors, notably that Acela is already operating and thus has a built-in base of support. Also, CAHSR is currently building in more conservative areas and their US representatives are not going to fight as hard for rail funding (or have as much influence with the Democratic congressional leadership).
As a European Railway Engineer I can see two major mistakes instantly with this project as you describe it. Construction should have started at either San Francisco or Los Angelas, for the simple reason of introducing the plane/car loving population to the advantages of high speed rail as soon as possible. As opening the central section first is likely to doom the project knowing the backward thinking of the US public towards trains. Secondly building the line mile on mile on an elevated structure is plain stupid. It horrendously increases cost, takes much longer to construct & guarantees much higher running costs in constant maintenance of these elevated structures, especially in earthquake prone areas. It should have been built along the ground, with roads given bridges over or under the line, & a cheap high security fence to keep suicidal idiots out !!! I would also guess that if the line ever gets complete, California will need another Nuclear Power Station just to provide the huge electrical demand that these electric high speed railway lines require. Not something I have seen mentioned anywhere !!!!!!!!!!!
which sucks because both of those things have been used on california’s current railways, they’re just far too old-fashioned and slow, not to mention understaffed, to actually be significantly effective as commuter rails
As a Californian all I would say is the elevated platform looks awesome lol, I’m not sure why they did it that way I want to believe it has to do with the hundreds of miles of irrigated land it passes through or the geography and that the route goes through some of the largest renewable power plants in the country which are being expanded in the high desert, also not opposed to nuclear.
"Construction should have started at either San Francisco or Los Angelas... [sic]" Which demonstrates that you don't understand California politics. Funding CA HSR required passing a state-wide bond measure voted upon by the whole electorate. The only way to gather enough votes was to get a lot of support *outside* the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles Metro area. The only way that was going to happen was if the Central Valley got their piece of the project FIRST. Because otherwise they'd be sure that it was just another big urban project that would never help them in their lifetimes.
Flying between the Bay area and LA is fine, I've done it a lot myself. The problem is that there's no room for growth. The slots at the existing airports are pretty much full. If you think it's expensive to build a rail line in California, try building a new airport. The cost of HSR relative to itself is irrelevant. The cost of HSR only matters as it relates to the cost of the alternatives.
"Flying between the Bay area and LA is fine, I've done it a lot myself." Me too "The problem is that there's no room for growth. The slots at the existing airports are pretty much full. " Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the coming eVTOLs. Joby is going to start service in Los Angeles in 2024. Battery powered flying taxis. MANY companies plan to bring these vehicles to market in the coming decade. Plus airliners will burn a lot less fuel (if they even burn fossil fuel at all....short haul should be battery or H2 fuel cell in less than 20 years) and use Short Takeoff and Landing. Meaning better use of existing airports. And adding one airport is far cheaper than the CAHSR at 100 billion. So it's a nope for me. I'm very proud I voted no in 2008 as a centrist Democrat. Yes on Biden in 2024, no on this colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
like expanding LAX ya right the cost of land alone would be incredibly expensive even somewhere like Ontario, it would still be a nightmare. I grew up along the route and I’m in my early 20s huge fan of the hsr I don’t want to drive 6-9 hours I just want to be on my phone, read a book, and enjoy the views.
@@CommonDaeze "like expanding LAX ya right the cost of land alone would be incredibly expensive even somewhere like Ontario" I mean it's not going to be 100 billion, come on now. If anything we would add a 4th airport in LA and a 4th in the Bay Area. Plus there are going to be a lot more eVTOL aircraft in the future, and STOL.....VTOL means no airstrip required, they can take off from any horizontal surface and land on any horizontal surface. STOL means they can use a smaller runway like Fullerton or Hawthorne or Bakersfield. The CEO of Joby said on 60 Minutes he's extremely confident that they can start eVTOL service in Los Angeles in 2024. That's not for going from SF to LA but it could make a trip to the airport five minutes instead of an hour. And it runs on batteries. I think private sector innovation will let us greatly expand traffic at existing airports (with lower emissions) before we have to expand them. And again...expanding one airport isn't going to be 100 billion. "I don’t want to drive 6-9 hours" Nobody does. We fly. You grew up here and don't fly around the state? Driving takes forever. " I just want to be on my phone, read a book, and enjoy the views." Yep, I do that on airplanes.
@@neutrino78x hopefully they also have high speed rail in the future. A combination of solutions will exist and be implemented just like renewable energy. There are a lot of cons for driving or flying that aren’t a problem with high speed rail. You can transport more people to more destinations at a faster rate than flying or driving, trains make stops so people can go to multiple destinations on one train, you can have multiple trains on one line, they are simply more efficient both at their function and energy consumption. And they are simply cool like who doesn’t want to go hundred(s) of miles an hour through mountains in something powered by only electricity? Let the poor people have the train and y’all can focus on the flying privately owned taxis and everyone wins.
@@CommonDaeze "opefully they also have high speed rail in the future." Sure but not at 100 billion. That's not reasonable and we don't even have the money as a state. " There are a lot of cons for driving or flying that aren’t a problem with high speed rail. " Like what, being able to go wherever there's an airport and not needing tracks? Being able to travel at high speed? "You can transport more people to more destinations at a faster rate than flying or driving, " Nope, especially not with CAHSR as currently presented. At least three times slower, by their numbers, probably four times slower. "Let the poor people have the train" I'm poor. My last job I made 21/hour in Silicon Valley. That's poor, trust me. The median salary here is 120k and the median home price is 1 million dollars. And I fly all the time. It's very cheap to fly Bay Area to LA/SD. Southwest is less than $100 one way usually. The web makes it easy to choose between five competitors who fly that route. In your little world, there would only be one provider, the government. The ticket price for CAHSR would be the same as a flight. Prop 1A forbids subsidizing it.
Thank you for always being thorough and responsible with your amazing educational and entertaining videos. You are one of the BEST content creators on RUclips and Nebula.
The real problem is that advocates rarely figure out the engineering. Crossing the Coast Ranges, earthquake faults and all, is simpler than crossing the Tehachapis, which also have earthquake faults and are steeper. Have any of the transit advocates ever driven I5? Imagine high speed rail up The Grapevine.
I think there is this fantasy people in the US have about how public transportation works and the reality is something that just isn't going to work in the US and California specifically. I used to live about an hour outside Stockholm in Sweden. While there was very good public transportation, it was far easier for me to drive to Gothenburg (the second largest city in Sweden) than to take the train all the way in to Stockholm, wait for the train to Gothenburg. Even if Sweden added high speed rail, it would be from Stockholm to Gothenburg. That's the same issue with high speed rail in California. I live an hour north of Union Station in Los Angeles. If I wanted to go visit my aunt in Palo Alto, it still would be faster to drive than to take high speed rail since it involves taking a train to Union Station to likely a station an hour away from my aunt. In Sweden and places with public transportation, those reliant on it have to make decisions about where they live and what they do based on public transportation. I had to drive people places because they couldn't take the train. The train was awesome to get into certain areas of Stockholm. But in LA, a train would have to be convenient to go everywhere otherwise it's incredibly limiting to those stuck only able to take public transportation. And I also remember racing for the last train back home in Stockholm otherwise I was stuck there for the whole night. That's what Americans wouldn't be able to stand - the massive limits caused by having to follow public transportation's schedules and stops.
We definitely have a fantasy about transit fixing all of our problems, but fortunately it doesn't need to. If HSR carries say 2,000 people per day between LA and San Francisco then that is 2,000 cars removed from the interstates which will massively help traffic. (Traffic is an exponential phenomenon where only a couple more cars turns free flowing bit slowish into a parkinglot) The added bonus being that if you have a backbone transit like airplanes or HSR/decent inter city rail, then other local transit will have a good hub to center on to make easy transfers which boosts demand and makes the local transit better. But even perfect™ transit won't be the best solution for every trip, especially with low density areas. But it would be nice to have an option to take a train i to my hometown and get picked up by family for vacations. (I don't expect this in my lifetime, its an hour+ from the interstate).
I agree Alyssa. As far as visiting your aunt, I highly recommend Southwest Airlines instead of driving! Takes an hour, just rent a car when you get here. (you can take Caltrain from San Jose or San Francisco in order to get to Palo Alto if you want.)
@@jasonreed7522 2000 peoples is a bit under stated, the different version of the TGV (french HSR) have a capacity beetween 300 and 500 passangers , with 400 train (not wagons, trains) on 10 lines
Thank you for being so honest and willing to listen to reasonable criticism. It's a trait that's hard to find these days. Calfornia HSR has...a lot of challenges, but I hope that they're able to complete it in the next few decades. The Pacific coast desperately needs HSR.
"he Pacific coast desperately needs HSR." How so? We can already get from silicon valley to los angeles in 45-60 minutes. I'm flying down there next weekend in fact, to San Diego. If I took HSR as currently planned, it would be a four hour ride. Instead I'm taking a Boeing 737 and the trip will take me about an hour.
For those who have noticed, yes, this is a re-upload. The older version of this video had a LOT that was wrong, and it was not something I was proud about or comfortable having up on this channel. This new version has fixed all those errors, and I'm much happier with this one. Thank you so much to everyone who left comments on the old video pointing out the many problems with it and to everyone who reached out to me directly to voice their concerns. I'm always listening to y'all and value your thoughts. Cheers :)
its great that you took the time to remake it with the correct facts. shows that you really care about what you create. Good job 👍
GIGA CHAD FOR CORRECTING
Goes to show when getting called out about wrong / alterted information reallifelore will stay true to the fact that he will not give us false information when possible / mistakes. Mad respect to you man mad respect
yo mad respect, I saw some videos criticizing the original upload so props for being respectful and addressing the issues with the first video.
Don't know if you found the answer to this, but you asked in the original video why they don't update the amtrak line, it's because amtrak doesn't own any of its tracks it leases it from private freight companies who have no interest in upgrading their lines as high-speed lines are useless for freight, that is why amtrak will never have high speed they need to build all new lines.
Looks good compared to the old video, thanks for fixing it!
I'm glad he took your criticism Alan good job being constructive it's really helped him and the people who watch him
Ty for spreading much needed info
The educational RUclips community has better peer review standards than most journals
This whole exchange/interaction between these two channels was stunning to watch. Instead of having some beef or throwing mud, RLL said “oh shit my bad” after getting blown out of the water for like 30 minutes and went back to revise everything using that criticism, and Fisher’s response to this was “glad you fixed it, it’s much better now” instead of milking the controversy for views or youtube boxing.
THANK YOU FOR CALLING HIM OUT BRO YOU’RE A SAVIOR
Wow. I 100% respect you for taking it on the chin and going back to fix, rather than to dig your toes in. You care about getting it right versus being right. Which is super important fir a channel like this. Bravo!
I only wish I could see my old comments on the last video to examine all the changes that were made, for science. But I am sure happy, this is a great improvement. 👍
The new video is still full of misinformation. He only fixed the mistakes he was specifically pointed to. All the rest of the misinformation he got from 5 minutes of googling is still there! This is a much trashier channel than I thought.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
The other factor is that the video that called him out was dead wrong on whether CA HSR is a good thing. It isn't.
I'm all for HSR, just not for the stupid version of it.
This is a much better view of the issue. Good job taking the constructive criticism of your first video! Your videos always should have the high standards you first set.
Is there any significant change from the first video?
@Don't Read My Profile Photo
lol xD
@Don't Read My Profile Photo
I won't, thank you.
I never got around to the other video. Anyone got the sparknotes of the changes?
This is a bad view. The original video was correct. Railways are too expensive, especially in america
I will always respect someone willing to correct their mistakes, and I already like RealLifeLore a lot!
Yes Journalism
Yh
agree
I won't always respect people who delete things they did wrong so you can't see them
@@PouLS he didn’t want to spread misinformation…
If they actually finish it. It'll allow people to avoid the I-5 That's the big draw. People die on the I-5 because the fog can reduce visibility to practically nothing. It's scary just seeing the signs to gauge visibility. I really appreciate that you actually redid the video not enough people do that.
That'll disincentivize the purpose of using the i5 which you'll need to remove some lanes and retrofit those lanes into busways or metro rail (like in Northern Virginia, Washington D.C metropolitan area). If this becomes a main political issue over cars and expanding highways simply bc there's constant traffic jams, the potential for a complete Californian HSR will be inevitable; this will increase in demand in other states.
@@spookysenpai7642I'm pretty sure the section they're talking about is the grapevine, which is a rural mountain pass, not an urban freeway. The only place those metro and bus lines could possibly connect to would be Bakersfield, which will already be connected by the high-speed rail.
@@spookysenpai7642 they cant really "remove some lanes" on the I5 its a major thoroughfare for delivery trucks and it's only two lanes. part of the reason why people want a bullet train you can get stuck between two dueling trucks who refuse to move over for hours.
not only that but it's a nightmare of potholes and delivery trucks. I do the drive from Sacramento to L.A on the 5 about 6 times a year and your always getting stuck behind trucks trying to pass one another because it's a two lane freeway, or smashing into some pothole because the right lane is completely destroyed because of the high volume of truck traffic. the bullet train will be convenient in innumerable ways, not to mention make commuting from the bay to L.A or vice versa a real possibility not to mention reviving dieng cities in the central valley like Fresno turning them into real suburban options because you can now get employment in either the bay area or L.A two of the biggest job markets in the world, then take a calm little one hour train ride back to Fresno.
This is why I trust this channel. They realized they made some mistakes, took the criticism, removed the video, then uploaded a new more accurate video.
this should show this channel can be wrong and should be taken with a grain of salt and fact checked just like everything else, nothing more or less
Yeah, no shit.
Exactly. I wish more ppl and channels in general understand that owning up to your mistake actually attracts more ppl to respect and like u
100%. Not a lot of big channels would do that
@@benrodir2 this shows that people make mistakes and that this Channel goes beyond others to correct mistakes. So if it stays up in this channel, i would argue it’s generally trustworthy. Nothing is 100% perfect so even trusted programs should still have be only part of your total information gathering
Well done for recognizing the shortcomings of your earlier video and taking the time to address them, not many youtubers go to the trouble, and most wouldn't even delete the original video!
what shortcomings?
@@gojodied There was a lot of inaccurate data in the original video
@@MagicalBread like?
@@MagicalBreadname 1 example
@@MagicalBread This video is inaccurate too
I just watched a video from NotJustBikes and he said that the way we used to make transit was first the railroad then the development but if you propose now to make a train that goes no where people would laugh you out of the room. This really helped me understand how California's HSR is actually future proofing mass transit for new developments to be transit oriented before they even pop up. I love that forward thinking.
We broke that pattern by foolishly dismantling those rails that allowed the development in the first place
I work in transportation planning. Thank you for making these corrections. Baseless claims against transit are a major problem in our field.
So are baseless claims for transit.
As they say in Afghanistan "Death 2 Amerika"
@@ravensngata as an average transit enjoyer, I agree.
@@ravensngata would you elaborate?
@@ravensngata Don’t like taking public transportation? Maybe afraid someone will touch you?
I live in Japan and several times had to "hop over" to Nagoya from Tokyo for a meeting. about 220 miles, less than a 2-hours ride with a train that leaves every 10-15 minutes. Don't even need to wake up particularly early for a 10am meeting in Nagoya and it is so, so much more convenient than flying. I hope California can pull this off and can reap huge societal and environmental benefits. Though by that time the Tokyo-Nagoya rail will be likely MagLev and will take abour 45 minutes :)
N e e d
I've been on that route to Nagoya. It's the best thing ever.
Japan has not wasted trillions of dollars fighting pointless wars in the Middle East could be part of the reason🤣
@@brentsummers7377 The high speed rail projects in the US are well funded, but the cost over runs drains them dry. Why can't we build them anything even close to a reasonable price?
@@Knight_Kin They are NOT well-funded are you kidding me??? The U.S. only gives enough to start, but does not provide a sustained funding source to actually finish any high speed railway project. But they're more than happy to destroy neighborhoods by building more highway lanes, and spend trillions on the military.
As someone is grown up in the valley hearing about the high-speed rail even with all the costs and how long it’s taken I still want them to make it. I’ve taken Amtrak it sucks if I could go back and forth quicker it would make life much easier
My respect for you has only grown, and grown a lot, for engaging with people’s feedback, taking stock of issues with the last video, and taking the effort and time to remake a video that would have taken a lot of work to make in the first place.
Your commitment to presenting reliable, informative and enjoyable reports to us is really commendable.
Power to you 🙌🏽
Just imagine if the mainstream media took note. 😆😅😂🤣😂😅🤣 sorry, I tried to keep a straight face….
@@sparkles7445 Absolutely 🙌🏽😅
I doubt it, let's see when a Russian youtuber who point mistakes in his video about Russia
As they say in Afghanistan "Death 2 Amerika"
Wow! He actually took the criticism, was a good sport about it, and re-made the video.
Actually nice.
A rare sight nowadays
ye but i woudnt have let the "discount wendover" shit just slide by, he has ablost double the subs and got 27mil views compared to 7mil from wendover,
so that's why i was just annoyed that he couldn't just make a constructive criticism video without the sh**ing on RLL's video...
@@elismart13 he just want no drama or trouble and I respect that a lot. dude just made a new video and that's it, period, end of the story. :v
I mean, why would he respond to aggressive insults by "flexing" more subs or whatever. he did the right thing lol
@@FXVNDER ye thats a good thing, read what i said again, I'm pissed at the guy who couldn't make a criticism video without being a pice of s**t, I've been watching RLL for a hella long time now
also isn't your pfp the one girl that dies.. or something really sad happens ... so like y 😂😂😥
as a native to CA, it is hard to imagine this being completed. in the sense that it seems too good to be true. I have spent many many hours of my life in a car traveling around the state. having this kind of rail system would be AMAZING
"I have spent many many hours of my life in a car traveling around the state. having this kind of rail system would be AMAZING"
Well, you're learning this late, but you know, two American brothers invented this wondrous device a while back. It lets you fly through the air. It's been upgraded a lot and it goes at Mach 0.85 now. It passes wheel on rail HSR like the HSR is standing still.
@@neutrino78x a train station is a lot more convenient than sitting two hours before a flight and going through security and waiting in long lines
@@cyclingtexas1670
"a train station is a lot more convenient than sitting two hours before a flight"
Why are you doing that? Boarding starts 30 minutes before and security is 5 minutes with "clear" and 20 without. If you're there more than 40 minutes early when you have "clear", or you don't have clear and get there more than 50 minutes early, you're wasting your time.
None of that makes up for 3 hours of your life that you wasted on the CAHSR that takes 4 hours to get to LA.
It's even worse if you're going down to SD because as currently presented going down to SD would take another hour, whereas in a plane, they just open the throttle a little more and you still get there in about an hour. Their max cruising speed is over 500 mph so they're only taking an hour to get to LA because they want to burn less fuel.
I've been on a flight from LA to San Jose that took only 45 minutes. Let's see CAHSR beat that (they can't beat one hour either).
btw to get on a TGV, users on TripAdvisor suggest about 30 minutes before also.
"going through security and waiting in long lines"
Five minutes with "clear" and 20 without.
@@neutrino78x Lol, dude you keep trying to push this airline propaganda 😁😁😁
No one shows up less than 1.5 hours before their flights because that is a surefire way to miss your flight and get stuck for hours or sometimes days at the airport if it’s a rural place with few flights.
This fantasy scenario isn’t even true for frequent fliers because you still want to get to your destination as a frequent flyer. Planes are nut busses! You don’t show up a few minutes before takeoff and expect to be allowed to board!
Doors close 15 minutes before your flight. That’s literally the law. You have to walk through the airport and gond your gate which in any large airport is a feat. You may have to travel on a train between terminals to get to your gate like you do in Orlando for example.
TSA lines can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour during busy times. And guess what, most people travel during the busy times. That’s why they’re busy! You need to find a place to park and take whatever train or shuttle from the parking lot to the terminals and then maybe take a train or another shuttle to your terminal.
None of this crap takes 10 minutes. Everyone knows this and that’s why no one shows up any less than 1.5 hours before their flight.
@@TohaBgood2
"No one shows up less than 1.5 hours before their flights because that is a surefire way to miss your flight "
If you want to waste your time, go ahead. I wouldn't get there that early.
Also go to TripAdvisor and see what the users on there say about getting on TGV, they say to get there about 30 minutes early, which is when you want to get the airport.
"ou don’t show up a few minutes before takeoff and expect to be allowed to board!"
On Southwest you can. There's no assigned seating, so whatever seat is open you take it, as long as they're still boarding you're good.
"TSA lines can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour during busy times."
"CLEAR" is a thing. Sign up for it. I think it's like 200/year.
Anyway, regardless of all of this, fact remains, CAHSR as currently designed, if ever completed, would be a 3.5-4 hour ride. You're just making up excuses for it being so slow. Vast majority of people who want to go from SF all the way down to LA or SD just fly. It's cheap, it's fast.
I am glad that RealLifeLore managed to explain the poverty here in the San Joaquin Valley. Having lived in the valley my entire life, I have seen thousands of homeless people living on the streets, thousands of people living in poverty and several murders in my home area. A lot of the points in this video clearly explain many of the problems that we in the valley face that the costal urban centers barely have to endure.
I am also surprised that my home city of Stockton get mentioned in this video.
San Diego and former Santa Cruz resident here, the homeless problem is everywhere. (And also the murder)
Also totally agreed with the Stockton shout-out
Just build more housing and transit lines. Screw with the NIMBYs trying to keep housing supply as low as possible to keep their property values artificially high.
@@ianhomerpura8937 OH how I wish this was the reality..
Have you seen Skid Row in LA? A lot of these costal urban centers are so expensive people are just on the streets with no help. They can’t even move down to the Central Valley.
Coastal urban areas barely endure these problems? They suffer those same problems badly.
He actually listened to Alan Fisher’s Video and put the extra effort to update his old video. This is the ideal response to feedback; looking into and seeing what information was incorrect in his old video and improving upon it or correcting it
RLL's first video was already down, so I watched the Fisher video. This takes all of those criticisms and made them the outline for this video.
@@jeffreypierson2064 Not really. He still has a mostly wrong information here. His depth of research is just laughable. He literally grabs the very first piece of misinformation on every subject.
This "correction" is a very slight improvement over the previous dumpster-fire attempt but it's still utter trash in terms of accuracy. It's just slightly less on-fire trash this time.
This is an entertainment channel. You shouldn't expect actual information here. That would be like trying to learn world history from Ancient Aliens.
There are sooooooo many mistakes in this "correction" it's crazy. Actually crazy. He only corrected the precise things that Alan mentioned and missed literally all the rest of the mistakes. This guy is such a joke.
Link?
@@loreleifajardo2430 Look up Alan Fisher armchair urbanist. It’s in his videos and it’s hard to miss
I feel like it's important to note that the interstate highway system has been completely rebuilt a few times since the 1950s. The cost of maintenance is the entire cost of rebuilding the highway (minus initial land purchase), the cost of rail maintenance once foundations are seismic stabilized and tunnels dug is much less.
There's a reason the Midwest and Northeast have the joke about there being 3 seasons: "Summer, Winter, and Road Construction". People don't notice the inconvenience or cost as much because the highway system gets fixed in chunks of a few miles at a time, every few years. Or a big mixmaster project in a few cities at a time all over the country.
The reality is that the highway system is nickel and diming us, it's also built for leisure, not large scale passenger travel and freight. Route 66 and the great American road trip still has appeal, but mostly a road trip is something that is "in the way" of you getting to your actual destination.
Because of this, people also view those highways as more important than they need to be. When I drive to visit family, my car mostly sits while the people who live there drive me around. Same as when I fly, but people have a connection to the imagined flexibility of the car.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
People want roads and cars not rail, thats all there is to it.
@@dougwade1332 We need both, it's not an either or scenario. Regions of Asia and Europe with high speed rail still have roads and cars.
"The reality is that the highway system is nickel and diming us, it's also built for leisure, not large scale passenger travel and freight. "
Actually, it was built so the US Army could run military vehicles across the USA at higher speeds than without the pavement.
"When I drive to visit family, my car mostly sits while the people who live there drive me around. Same as when I fly, but people have a connection to the imagined flexibility of the car."
Everybody flies from SF to LA. Just look at the traffic map on 511, look at it during rush hour California time. You'll see there's a big blob of red for LA, and lots of red in the Bay Area too, but the three highways that go vertically between those areas are all green. That's because the traffic issue is WITHIN the Bay Area and WITHIN Los Angeles/San Diego, not between.
Thank you for the re-upload! I am glad that you addressed the mistakes from the previous video.
It came out a minute ago
Indeed
What was the mistake?
@@GEnghis559 There were many mistakes. There’s a video made by another channel that goes through all the errors of the original RLL video.
@@GEnghis559 You can find RLL's original video re-uploaded with just a quick search on youtube. It definitely seemed that RLL had a more critical take on the railway in the first upload, received some backlash and then softened his criticism of the railway.
Great job with the update. While funding is hard to find, it's not like California is not flush with cash right now in terms of tax revenue. California as well, not really getting any private investment on the project is a good thing, as the project does not need to "break even" in terms of construction costs. They can continue to fund development under the state budget. All California really needs to do is break even on transportation, maintenance and staffing costs per person which is an important point to note. Charging $50 for the San Francisco to LA route is still viable even if it "loses money" in terms of breaking even with construction costs which is important to note. For California, all that really matters is ridership, which they can boost with subsidized pricing, and maybe taking a small cut above the break even costs. The cost of the project doesn't really matter as California does have the government revenue to continue development.
Plus, the experience gained in building the CHSR will allow workers to specialize, and that will hopefully lead to more HSR projects across the country at a lower cost and faster speed.
They could also follow japan's example and buy land around the stations and developing it into dense mix developments as a way of additional funds.
Yeah, also highways dont make money either lol
Actually no, they will have to bring in additional money. They have to pay back the bonds they promised to those who lent their money to California.
Subsidizing some of the costs for riders is what is needed for sure, it’s not like it’ll be something that is going to be taking as much of the cost as time goes on as ridership increases too
Really glad you’ve made this video, and looked to make your content better with the re-upload. Thank you @RealLifeLore for bringing important topics to the forefront, especially when it’s something that relates to my home
Thank you for re-uploading this video. You have given CAHSR the time and effort it deserves (if only the feds agreed). As an Electrical Engineer in California who has worked on Acela, I love the CAHSR project and want to see it completed. It hurts seeing journalists fail to cover the details of this situation correctly. You clearly recognized your mistake and corrected it. Your integrity has yielded one more subscriber.
ok
Why should the rest of the USA fund a train in the richest state in the nation? Very regressive for such a progressive state isn't it? If California wants it so bad then they should pay for it themselves.
@@Bibitybopitybacon 1) Every state utilizes a combo of federal/state funds for transp. projects (Interstate and city highways for example). Other states get federal funding for their projects there's no reason to single out California.
2) It's estimated that 'fixing' the housing crisis in CA would put $7k+ into EVERY Americans pocket (even if you don't live in CA!) through increased economic activity. This is because, as it stands currently, the growth of CA's economy is happening faster than housing development for a variety of factors. Completeing CAHSR "Unlocks" Real Estate in criminally underfunded and poorer communities who are ready and willing to have commuters move (see Frenso, Bakersfield). Moving these workers into areas like Silicon Valley and LA turns these classically agricultural cities into 'feeder cities' with lower rents, allowing young workers to move to CA for their careers and have a good start without battling for limited housing as it currently stands.
@@Bibitybopitybacon The rest of the U.S. probably wants the housing crisis in California fixed, right?
Building single family homes is not the answer, mixed use development with rapid transportation is.
This is the first step.
@@gnnascarfan2410 I keep seeing this answer and it makes no sense. How is this rail going to fix housing in in California? You can't commute every day on it from the central valley. The prices of tickets is going to be so hight commuting on this thing isn't going to be practical. California's insane zoning rules are clearly an issue with the lack of affordable housing. Something this train does nothing for.
I love this new narration, it's so much more honest and nuanced, and I LOVED how you were far more caring and sympathetic to the people of the Central Valley and Palmdale. I noticed, and I loved it! (Also I noticed how you correctly pronounced Merced. I love you, sir.)
As always, the landowners of California are screwing over the rest of California.
There were only a couple small errors still present.
1. The animation at 0:47 is the same animation that was used in the previous video. It's incorrect. No one takes the 1 from San Francisco to LA. It's a scenic route, good for tourists, but you specifically mentioned a "typical trip" and that's not typical at all. A typical trip is on the 5. Through the west side of the Central Valley.
2. The San Joaquin Valley is not the most impoverished part of the state, even though it is close. East California, including Owens Valley through Baker and Barstow and down to Imperial Valley are far more impoverished, because they have all the systemic issues of the Central Valley with no water to make up for it. The Los Angeles Aqueduct was built to siphon off that water from Owens Valley. The HSR is not planned to be built to East California.
All in all, the progress for the HSR is disappointing, and I'm not a typically impatient person. This new video highlights the ACTUAL problems, and I appreciate it.
He replaced butchering Merced with butchering Acella (its A-cell-A not ASS-ella)
@@jasonreed7522 it really doesn’t matter, we all know what he meant though
The Communists of the Soviet Union knew what to call the landowners in the 1930's, they called them "kulaks."
@@floxy20 my family were kulaks.
Another tiny mistake, but it looks like they mislabeled San Jose as Gilroy. Or if they meant to put Gilroy rather than San Jose, why label Gilroy instead of San Jose? Seems weird.
1:00 The typical drive isn't along Cabrillo Hightway (9 hours) but inland on West Side Freeway (5 hours 50 mins).
Ermmm, 9 hours and 5:50? From where to where? I don't remember the last time SF-LA took me less than 7 hours over the 5. That's just not a realistic amount of time even if you don't stop for gas at all. I guess in the middle of the night it's possible, but even then there's sometimes road work on the 5.
@@TohaBgood2 They must be leaving from Northridge or something
@@hotbobbysauce950 Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe if you drive from the very outer northern edge of the LA area to the outer southern/western edge of the Bay Area that's kinda realistic. But most people don't live at the edge by definition 😁
The previous CHSRA leaders were also very incompetent and borderline corrupt. They overhauled their board recently and it seems like just some solid large investments into this project would boost confidence immensely. I think now is the time to boost funding and send construction into a new gear, because the SF electrification will be done soon, and connecting the valley to SF alone would be a major win, especially with how many Bay Area residents are already moving out there. The LA segment is going to definitely be a challenge, and the one I'm most worried about, but it'll remain to be seen how it'll get down here. I think a wild card is Brightline West. If they can finally get a train from at least Rancho Cucamonga to Vegas, I think that would greatly boost morale and faith in trains down here in Southern California, and if they roll with an extension to Palmdale, I could really see private investors begin to jump into CAHSR.
This project finally has some footing, not much, but some to really get rolling and now should be the team CA throws some major $$$ at it and build the confidence it needs to get this done. And yes, a majority of Californians still support it, and really want an alternative way to get from LA to the Bay or the valley.
"and if they roll with an extension to Palmdale, I could really see private investors begin to jump into CAHSR. "
Nah. The route is still stupid.
I do think private enterprise might build a train here, but it would have to be on the median of I-5, and it would be at their own expense. I applaud what Brightline is doing. And Brightline is doing it at their own expense and going down the median of the highway. I agree, if it is successful, they or another private company might build something up I-5.
But it's for private enterprise because we already have an existing high speed vehicle that gets from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles in 45-60 minutes. It's called a Boeing 737.
Not "borderline", the entire project has been textbook corruption from the start. It was never actually intended to be completed. The overruns are a feature, not a bug. Those hundreds of billions didn't evaporate.
@@neutrino78x I-5 would completely skip the major cities of the central valley, in particular Fresno, which is the 5th largest city in the state. Bigger than Sacramento. There's a reason that CA-99 carries so many people. I-5 was specifically made to NOT serve those cities, and act as a bypass.
Because, as you point out, a train is not a plane. Some people will be taking the train from SF to LA, but others from SF to Fresno, Bakersfield to LA, etc. There will be many city pairs rather than just people traveling from one end to the other. It can do things that planes can't.
Extension to Palmdale is important because that allows them to connect to the conventional tracks there. Once that connection is made, they can run hybrid trains all the way from LA to SF and Sacramento, using the conventional tracks at either one, while the rest of the route is getting built out.
@@daverohrich8518 Yeah, HBO's True Dective's S2 shows how the corruption works where the glorified land squatters get in before the gov't is forced to buy the land. Economic stimulus, er I mean transfers, at it's worse with many at all levels in on it.
@@daverohrich8518 also not a lot left over for the investor money in nothing out
Thanks for taking the time to redo the video. It's really hard to admit a mistake, and it takes a lot of courage. I look forward to continue watching your content, and I hope the best for you.
It seems to me that they should've prioritized building segments of the rail between the commuter suburbs of San Francisco and LA first and then slowly extended to the next one and then the next until you actually could connect the two.
this seems like a good idea, but it's important to remember a two things:
1) some of the closest commuter cities to either region already have connection to their city centers through CalTrain in the North and MetroLink in the south
2) the segments of HSR that cross through these regions are the more challenging ones to build
The Central Valley was chosen as a starting point because environmental clearances were easiest to get there and cleared first, building there would amount to mostly building over flat land (which is a lot easier than dealing with the issue of getting through the mountains on either side of the valley), and building this segment first would, as the video notes, actually enable "rail" travel between SF and LA, just including slower routes north of Merced and an unfortunate bus connection below Bakersfield. It was a sort of strategic piece to demonstrate how useful linking the cities could be by offering a slower variant while the final one was being worked on. Also, it's useful to remember that they are still doing things in other segments while this is being worked on. For instance, the aforementioned CalTrain lines actually serve as the end of the HSR route, so they needed to be electrified, and that project is currently nearing completion, meaning that long before HSR is a thing SF Bay Area residents will get to enjoy faster commutes on the electrified CalTrain network.
@@jonahbedouch You forgot the most important reason construction started in the Central Valley... The only way the initial political authorization was going to happen in CA was if the project appeared to have benefits for places outside the Bay Area & Los Angeles basin. Democratic politicians up and down the Central Valley threw their support behind it on the promise of plenty of pork-barrel spending and union jobs in their communities that would come BEFORE more spending in the big cities.
@@jonahbedouch Lot of BS excuses
@@robertherman1146 There isn't a single excuse there since there's nothing to excuse. The central valley segment is the only segment that made any remote amount of sense to start with.
The north segment of the system is already entirely served by rail, and in spite of that many of the delays have come entirely from protesters in San Mateo.
The south segment is so garishly expensive that with every dollar the agency has ever been given they'd only get about a quarter of the way through it. On top of that, all of the non-expensive parts to build (the area near LA) is already served by rail, and people along the way to Bakersfield still refuse to sell HSR land (there's something like 30 miles of alignment they still don't own since they refuse to eminent domain).
The only remotely affordable segment was also the only segment that actually doesn't repeat existing service, provides a link to a historically underserviced region of California, and still provides a relatively strong transit backbone. It's literally common sense.
@@jonahbedouchSlight correction: the Central Valley segment is already served by the Amtrak San Joaquins. You are pretty much correct on everything else, but the Central Valley segment absolutely already has rail.
This was a very good reupload, I think you did the right thing, even if it wasn't really economically beneficial to you. Much more nuanced explanation of the situation. Thank you.
As a Californian, my biggest gripe with high speed rail is how the cost is used as a political tool. For a state with over $3 trillion in GDP, $105 billion isn't as much as its made out to be. Out of $3000 billion, $105 billion isn't much considering our long term emissions and auto usage goals.
Make the danged thing and people will use it!
I will definitely use it. Going to LA is super time consuming so I rarely get down there, but if I can buy a (relatively) cheap train ticket and get down there in like 2 and a half hours, I’d go down there wayy more often.
@@majura3743 even if you could replace the 7 hour drive with a 3 or 4 hour trip, I'd take it. I hate dealing with planes: show up at least an hour early for security (which make the 90 min flight closer to a 3 hr PITA), have everything you're bringing thoroughly inspected, and pay for the privilege with an extra $10 to $20. Give me a quick and easy train to LA and I'll probably go there.
Lol. If you think 105 billions can do it, you are very very wrong. It will be close to 3X that.
@@bikecrew1736 even 3× that isn't a lot considering the value it'll bring. Connect LA to SF? Gonna be great
@@dfunited1 don’t forget the big reason why to take a train. Leg room.
Minor issue, at 7:32 you show a Maglev train, CHSR will use conventional rail.
no one cares
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
As an Angelino... this video is better and more accurate than the previous one.
Thank you for correcting most of the problems with the older video.
People often forget that California is bigger than the entire of Japan and that the land heres is privately owned and expensive unlike in China where the government can just take it from you.
And our politicians are nothing like the European ones so yeah... it's a nightmare to get anything done right.
Thank you for taking the time to look back at the last video, as a person from Fresno, I love that the issue of poverty was touched up on this video, and I hope you keep up the good work man!
I've lived in California my whole life and had no idea this was even a thought. I am happy this is at least being worked on.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
@@electrictroy2010 You're also a Glenn Beck fan, you lose all credibility
Props for the re-upload man. Most RUclipsrs would just leave the old version up and not do a thing about it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There’s no true freedom of movement without public transit and trains are absolutely vital in this regard. Between the Bay Area and LA right now, there’s only three land connections: Hwy 101, Interstate 5, and Hwy 1. Hwy-1 is the scenic route built along CA’s sheer Pacific cliffs and is at constant risk of collapsing into the ocean. Both the 101 and 5 are bottlenecks that get completely blocked when someone gets into an accident due to sleepy driving under the heat of the Central Valley. High speed rail is much safer, faster, and an overall critical solution to resolving the ever increasing traffic that ensnarls both the Bay Area and LA. Cars may get you anywhere, but in dense urban environments, no matter how wide the roads become, congestion just gets worse with more people, and that’s all before parking and accidents are taken into consideration, both of which are hugely problematic in areas with big populations.
Completion of this high speed rail is vital to CA’s long term growth, and I’m all for it. Foreigners (and natives) living in the EU, China, and Japan can easily get around with their massive rail network quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. You can’t say the same about foreigners (and non-driving natives) living in the US, who need to get a driver’s license and buy/lease a car before they can do anything on their own. This also applies to kids and teens.
So let's pay for a super expensive system...so "foreigners" can get around fast? How absurd.
You sound like someone hired by the HS Rail. This nonsense about Hwy-1 ...at constant risk of collapsing into the ocean! The sky is falling. True freedom at risk! Did you miss the part where there's planes and cars and trains already? Just not overpriced ones just for the Elite. And "foreigners" .smh
I mean, there IS freedom of movement without them. It's just grueling and expensive AND/OR time-consuming, whether by car, by horse-drawn wagon, or on foot :P
But just like freedom of speech is underpowered without equitable access to communication technology (be it by postal service, by telephone or telegram, or by internet connection), freedom of movement is underpowered without equitable access to transportation technology. There is a point where freedom meets equity optimally, and societally it is in all our best interests to find it, and in _this_ country particularly, we need to find it _yesterday!_
P.S. re: the rest of what you say, I broadly agree, and I'm not contradicting any of it.
High speed rail is critical for any hope of humanity's future sustainability. You are correct - high speed rail is much safer, faster and better solution than more people in individual vehicles on highways pushing themselves through long and exhausting travel trying to stay alert. The solutions are out there, but we need a major system change in order for it to actually come to fruition. It can happen, but people need to realize the system is the sickness and we can't have a sustainable future without system change. A good alternative to look into is an 'economic calculation in a natural law resource based economy.'
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
So glad that the new video was uploaded due to some errors made on the old one.
This shows quite a bit of integrity.
Glad I stayed for this video.
I think this video shows that you are a very good RUclipsr, you took constructive criticism and took the time to remake a video so you have quality and no misinformation
one criticism i'd make is at 13:03 you compare the cost of land acquisition between California and China. but in China, the government can just seize the land if they want to, and the consequences for defying the government are severe. That makes it a lot easier for governments to plan out their transit routes. They can just push out any people who are in the way.
I would add that california should have acquired all the land along the route before starting the project, to keep such costs down. but now they should use eminent domain to acquire the land and pay a reasonable rather than inflated compensation to the landowners
It really is so depressing. California definitely has so many issues to be sure, but you can't fault them for wanting to push for something so ambitious for the public good. Which is why it would be a shame if other people saw these severe hiccups due to issues specific to California, and assume that it's not even worth trying anywhere else.
Other states like NY need to look at California as an example of incompetent leadership and buit HSR right instead of seeing it as HSR sucks (because the technology is good, its just Cali is notorious for its incompetence which has caused water shortages, blackouts, and insane street homeless crisises)
I wonder if Californian leaders ever looked at smaller nations like Saudi Arabia that collaborated with the French and Spanish engineers in Europe to provide either the TGV or AVE rolling stocks to them or even Japanese Shinkansen, if they were able to do that instead of doing it themselves from scratch I felt like there would of been a true HSR in California by now because at the end of the day they really just need funding and project done and no other Barriers faced by the investors who doubted the project at the beginning.
By then after they see the reliability of the rolling stocks and train units it’ll give them a great hope to actually get the entire project done.
That’s what the NorthEast did with the Acela Express and Amtrak by allowing to purchase from the reliable SNCF French rail makers, sure the Northeast Corridor’s nearly 460 mile line from DC to Boston doesn’t go Truly High Speed all the way due to much of the rails path designed ages ago therefore making it not designed for HS, it’s a lot better than Zero connection and much much faster than planes. Amtrak is already out with a bunch of new rolling stock of modern high speed trains from France
exactly, high speed rail and public transport is the future of sustainability, not teslas and whatnot. people need to recognize that
The fact that California is even trying to solve issues and move to a sustainable future is what sets them apart from the majority of states who prefer to do nothing. When this system is fully operational, no matter how much it costs, it will be a complete game changer
@@jasonreed7522 Political incompetence isn't the reason for homelessness. It's Prop 13 and NIMBYism that has created a shortage of housing
As a Californian in his late 30s, I am very angry that high-speed rail has been so botched from inception, and that I possibly won't see it ever completed in my lifetime.
Too bad California did not simply ask JR, Japan's national railway company, to help out.
I feel the same way.
As a Spaniard in his mid 20s. Relax, it'll be fine.
Here's the thing, as you can see from this very video, nowadays we're one of the world's references when it comes to HSR, inded having the second largets HSR network only behind China, and one of if not the most economically efficient too.
And yet... I remeber when AVE first started. I remember TV lambasting its issues, calling it a failed experiment, claiming that Talgo would rule the rails for ages to come and high speed traffic would be done exclusively by plane for the foreseeable future. I remember the failed stations, the corruption, the ineptitude.
And I assure you, behind every successful HSR system there's a similar story. HSR requires a lot of government collaboration, which is terrible at the begining because politicians are shit at the needed skillsets. It's normal for it to struggle.
If we could get it right in a decade or so, so can you, I believe in you, don't give up.
It was not botched, it has been sabotaged by conservative obstructionism.
@@thespanishinquisition4078 I always feel super weird when I have to tell people about the issues the other projects are/were having! These jerks are literally forcing me to lambast HSR projects that I am a big fan of to prove that we need to finish our own!
Love the Spanish HSR network BTW! You scored big as a country by getting it! Despite all the issues and delays and budget overruns, in the end everyone is constantly praising Spain's HSR network. One is led to believe that it just "poofed" into existence all perfect one day! 😁😁😁
Everybody wants the benefits but no one wants to put in the work that you put in for all those years!
I was gonna joke about it but I respect RLL for re-uploading with edits after Alan’s absolute roast of a video.
It’s always important that educational youtubers correct their mistakes and that people learn not to take these channels as gospel
Mad respect, you not only redeemed yourself but came back twice as strong. Genuinely impressed by your professionalism, well done.
Props to you for redoing this! Also, Acela is pronounced "a-SELL-a," not "ASS-ala". Keep up the good work!
What I wanted to say, considering I'm in Acela territory.
This doesn't feel like re-upload at all, it has so much more information and makes a lot more sense, amazing work guys!
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
This bullet train is one giant money laundering operation. It will never be completed. The billions in cost overruns are being funneled through back channels into the coffers of the California Democrat political machine.
At first I thought I had Deja Vu, but there are some surprising changes in here compared to the older video.
Great job on taking a step back and improving on the previous video!
Building in CA, the deepest blue of all the States is tough! I have a friend, his 9 year old wanted to build a model car, after applying for the proper permitting, background checks, sourcing prop 65 compliant glue, a no VOC chemical extraction booth, proof of proper training to use an exacto knife signed and notarized by the chief of police, OSHA training and so on. A homeless person high on meth broke into their house and stole it 4 hours after being released from jail for assault with a deadly weapon. The police found him high of course, unsuccessfully trying to huff the glue, with meth on him but since the model was only worth $750 there was nothing they could do and he wasn't arrested.
As a Stocktonian, I appreciate the due diligence you put into this reupload. Your work has always been incredible, although I do miss the Toyota Corolla comparisons lol
Car companies do not want their products compared to high-speed rail because they do not want to compete with it in North America. Why else would you think modern life on this side of the Atlantic orbits so heavily around the automobile? It is _king_ here.
Don’t stay stockonian. That shit just sounds so weird lmao.
@@mycommentwilltriggeryou9810 whoops sorry for triggering you bud. Guess I should say hoodlum since I live in the south side.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Massive respect for your integrity as a RUclipsr, and for the quality/nuance of both this and all your other videos. Proud to be a subscriber!
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Good job on taking the critique/criticism(?) very well! Not only did you pull the original video within 24 hours of Alans, but you surprised a lot of us by remaking it! Good man!
Glad you took a closer look into the topic :)
@Don't Read My Profile Photo ok, I won't, thanks for the heads up!
9:49 the interstate is a triumph of reducing cost by standardising design and other project aspects across the nation. Too bad the same effort wasn't put in for trains or public transit (eg mainland Chinese metros). Also too bad how many us cities are slashed or garrotted by urban freeways
Yeah, the problem is that we don't build any trains so there's nothing to standardize (almost). Amtrak is making strides though. It's sad that Amtrak's success is so widely ignored. It's basically reached breakeven just before the pandemic! Given that Amtrak is saddled by Congress with incredibly expensive money-losing long-distance routes, I'd say that Amtrak is doing amazingly well. If we invested some strategically money in short to medium Amtrak routes, we could have a really nice inter-urban and commuter rail system in many places in the country. Maybe then we'd be able to even start building new routes and start standardizing some.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Interstate construction reduced costs in no small part by mainly buying up land where the poorest and most politicallly disenfranchised people lived... in other words, it bulldozed black neighborhoods so white suburban commuters could get downtown quicker. That's not something to strive towards.
@@lifeinhd4053 Well, that was limited to the urban areas. The actual Insterstates were built with incredible federal backing and benefits for its users - something railways don’t experience
I don’t understand the objection to including the 300,000+ residents of the Palmdale and Lancaster area. These communities were left behind by I-5. When planning a project like this, you don’t just get out a ruler and draw a straight line between point A and point B on a map. You would obviously want to include as much connectivity between communities as reasonably possible.
Cost overruns and delays are not ideal, but not unique to CA. The Tokyo-Nagoya project costs have hit $50b for the 220 mile route, inflating 27% from initial estimates. That’s $230m/mile. CA’s $110b figure is the total estimate for the entire 500 mile route, which is $220m/mile. The price for the initial route is about a quarter of that (the more urban and mountainous segments will be costly). Of course, the Japan project is for a maglev. CA’s max speeds will only reach 70% of its speed. So more bang for the buck there. My point is that delays and overruns are par for the course with these projects, especially considering this is the first such project in the Americas, so it’s to be expected.
One more thing that bugged me was at 1:00. The SF to LA drive is going to take you much longer than 6 hrs if you take the coastal highway as you show in your graphic. Probably pushing 10 hrs going that way. Small detail, I know. Glad you fixed the more glaring errors from before!
My dad has a friend who owns some property in Shafter and when he was asked about buying his property for the railway he told them to contact him again when they are about a mile away
I don't blame him for the skepticism lol
That's the difference between this and China. In China if you're in the way of a public works project they will just build it on top of you and put you in prison if you resist.
As a Californian, this is a much better video than the first one. Kudos :) also thanks for pronouncing Merced right this time haha
Great improvement, as a Cali resident I really appreciate the update. The first video got me a little frustrated because I know you could do better. Thank you for this.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
I appreciate the tone of this much more just 3 minutes in. There’s a lot of problems building in this country, but we need to build. When this thing is finished it will transform the region and hopefully we can learn from our mistakes for future projects.
Then again, there is still massive resistance from incumbent vested interests, such as car manufacturers and airlines.
Better give out the HST budget to all people in the region as UBI. Money much better spent will be
@@bergonius like how giving people and businesses money for free during the pandemic turned out so great? you cant give people money for nothing because then the money is not respected, it has no value. you always have to have strings attached. its better to have the people clean the parks and rivers and plant trees than to just give the money for free
@@bergonius not if you’re trying to solve climate change or economic infrastructure. Building things is good actually.
"When this thing is finished"
It's not getting finished. The Governor already stated there shall be no more construction beyond the initial operating segment (Merced to Bakersfield) because we don't have an extra 100 billion in the budget.
"it will transform the region"
How so? We already have a high speed means of transportation between Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Jet aircraft. It only takes 45-60 minutes, as opposed to 4 hours for CAHSR as currently planned.
very unusual for RUclipsrs to actually accept criticism. nice job!
11:55 glad this is here now and how in the older video you suggested building rail through a mountain.
The integrity, maturity and grace you showed in fixing the issues with this video is so refreshing and reassuring to see on this platform. Outstanding, well done.
Meanwhile, here on Vancouver Island, we have no more passenger train service at all. Our one railway, the E&N, has deteriorated to such an extent that running passenger services on it is no longer safe, so we are pretty much stuck with the car, and it will most likely remain that way for a _long_ time.
But Vancouver islands population in so small though and low density
@@SuperKing604 So? Would you really want us to be condemned to cars?
Love your videos! Couple tiny corrections, as I live in DC - "Acela", pronounced "ah-SEH-la" and your graphic showing 2:45 between DC/Boston is wrong - it's 2:20 from DC-NY but still 8-9 depending on the train/stops to Boston. and you're right, it only hits 140-150 mph for like 20 minutes, it really needs its own dedicated tracks (and lower fares). Other countries have figure out highspeed rail, I wish the US could!
Honestly, I love that I can tell what you changed compared to your previous version. And not exclusively the pronunciation of "Merced" which I completely understand as I've only lived in LA for a few years. Thanks for just being a consistently great video maker
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
I really appreciate you redoing this video, the new one is way more balanced, complete and informative. One of the more exhaustive CA HSR explainer videos I've seen so far.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have family in Orange County and San Diego. So I can attest to the long drives there (6-9 hours depending on whether you take the more direct I-5 or the more scenic 101) and miserable traffic especially around LA. I am strongly in favor of a high speed rail system here, and remember voting for it back in '08. Yes, I get that it's expensive, but it's an investment I'm confident will pay off once completed. That and I just want to be able to visit family without dealing with airport security or hours of driving and traffic.
Hi, there, you're one of the few commenters who's been in an automobile from San Francisco to Southern California and knows how difficult it is to fight traffic. The rest of the commenters don't know what it's like to feel like driving between two cities fast, but only to have a choice of watching traffic on the "free" way move like a turtle.
"I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have family in Orange County and San Diego. So I can attest to the long drives there (6-9 hours depending on whether you take the more direct I-5 or the more scenic 101) and miserable traffic especially around LA. "
Minera you know, there is this new thing they invented, it's called an airplane, and it gets you from the Bay Area to OC/SD a lot faster than HSR would.
@@neutrino78x not really. You have to go through all of the airport and get their very early for this and they rarely bring you to a developed area of the city. HSR often start as the central part of the city but things tend to build around it unlike airports.
@@skygge1006
"You have to go through all of the airport and get their very early for this and they rarely bring you to a developed area of the city. "
None of that is true. I go from the Bay Area to Los Angeles several times each year. From the time I step out of the bus onto the airport in San Jose to the time I'm at the terminal waiting for the boarding process is less than 10 minutes.
And you know, notice how you have to invent all these delays for air travel, to make excuses for trains, BECAUSE TRAINS ARE TOO SLOW.
You know what, forget your stupid excuses man. You have to travel to both unless you live right next to the train station.
So the time starts when I'm sitting in the airplane and you're sitting in the plane, ok.
The bottom line dude, as currently planned the CAHSR is going to take at least 3 hrs and 5 minutes, that's if you go by the numbers they put in the 2022 business plan, and a plane only takes an hour.
Nobody is going to say "you know, I could get there an hour, but instead of doing that, I want it to take three times longer." Like in Europe, the only people riding this would be tourists. Locals would continue to fly. SF to LA isn't like the NEC where most people drive small distances within the corridor. Here, most people are going from end of the corridor to the other, and it's just too far for trains, especially wheel on rail.
I have family up and down the state that sometimes I only see once or twice a year because of how long the drives are, making that trip more than once a week or even a month is rough.
I am glad you went back and improved bits. Takes bravery and every sensible person applauds it.
This was well researched and much more representative of the actual situation at hand. Thanks for catching your errors and addressing them.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
Dude love that you re-evaluated the issue and your old video! I really believe public transit is a worthy investment, the only problem being we've designed most of our area for cars. I'm sure if we actually tried this it would be a big step towards a more sustainable way of travel. If we can dump billions into military and highways, we can build an HSR system. Correcting the publics' view of public transit would help I'm sure.
Also multiple stops would be good, if it went to just a few cities less people would use it
Once again, a master of your craft. Because, only a master can accept criticism. For, in that, he realizes that there's always something new to learn. U da bomb RLL!
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
Sir. You are breaking RUclips law by not doubling down on mistakes and being belligerent about said mistakes. Joking! I appreciate you doing this, truly. So much respect for your ethos, pathos and logos. Again, just awesome.
Thank you for the updated facts, yes, but can I say I'm just happy you pronounced Merced correctly? 😭 Mer-ked was killing me in the previous version, haha
The California HSR is so cursed that even attempting to create a video about it will cause the author & creator(s) of the video to be plagued by it being over budget, under performing, and requiring extensive rework to obtain the desired product.
Would love to hear about your process in making this decision similar to what CGP Grey did on his reupload about trident missiles. Lotta respect. This video is much better.
Damn RLL, you owned up, fixed it, and improved it? Earned a sub and respect.
Glad to see this reupload. Owning up to mistakes is the best thing we can do!
What a great move, your dedication to getting the facts right are why I’m subbed 👍
I doubt it, let's see when a Russian youtuber who point mistakes in his video about Russia
A good railway will keep people who don't want to drive off the streets and let those who need to/want to have more space to drive, and less chance of causing an accident!
I'd love to see something like this on the east coast. Connect Boston to New York, to Philadelphia, to D.C., to Raleigh or Charlotte, to Atlanta, to Jacksonville and Miami. It would seem that this would be able to link up to the acela line that you mentioned.
China has built more miles of high‐speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads.
France’s state‐owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government.
Spain has built its high‐speed rail system with a public‐private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion.
The state‐owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has
@@electrictroy2010 OMG large infrastructure projects are very expensive? Who knew???? Still overall hugely beneficial in terms of economic activity and improving the lives of people. Also not getting the full picture in all those cases by debt alone.
@@electrictroy2010 public infrastructure is never supposed to make profit in itself. Every public road is putting the state into debt, that's the point. The profits (socially and economically) of public infrastructure are then seen elsewhere, as better connectivity leads to social and economic development.
@@electrictroy2010 you better ask you’re government not to build road, road system never make money, then you can ride a horse, m*r*n
@@electrictroy2010 how much money has the interstate system made?
I think that the 22bn segment from the Central Valley to San Francisco will likely be completed. The segment between Blossom Hill Caltrain station and the San Francisco Transit center will most likely need to be upgraded for future Caltrain service. This means that infrastructure like new passing tracks, an upgraded station in San Jose, and grade separations will likely occur without High Speed rail funds. Between Blossom Hill and Gilroy the land is flat and easy to build on like in the Central Valley. But the challenge is obviously the 25 miles across the mountains between Gilroy and the Central Valley where it’s estimated to cost between 7-10 billion for a tunnel. I think that it’s likely that the project will connect San Francisco to Bakersfield in 10 years but no Los Angles.
That Caltrain segment is already getting upgraded to hsr/electrification and it’s i haven’t seen anyone actually cover this. Down in LA union station rail alignments are under reconstruction for metro adjustments and HSR as well. So in reality it’s San Jose to Merced that needs building to complete HSR to SF and multiple projects are happening simultaneously than people give them credit for.
@@nayhboseguera1774 although local agencies are upgrading los angles Union station and the station in Anaheim, they are not upgrading the corridor between the two which I don’t get. It takes around 50 minutes for Metrolink trains to go between Anaheim and Los Angles currently. Which is just shameful for two cities that are only 25 miles apart. The people in charge of the transportation systems in LA and Orange County should have definitely invested in upgrading this corridor so it has more tracks so HSR gets its own set and Metrolink/Amtrak gets its own set separate from freight, full grade separation so trains can operate at higher speeds around 125mph, and upgraded junctions so different systems don’t wait for eachother. I am truly baffled by the lack of investment in Metrolink and the over investment into LA Metro, good commuter rail plays a huge part in cutting traffic.
People keep overlooking San Diego, CA. It's the 8th Largest population in the USA, which is more people than San Francisco or San Jose.
Thanks for the update. It's not often that people will make corrections, especially with how much you changed from the original =)
Good on you for fixing this! A lot of other youtubers would have just left it up
how do you know its fixed? he uploaded it like 3 min ago
what changed
@@gojodied look up a video by Alan Fisher, he was the one who called out his last video.
Mad respect for the remake it's even more informative now. Commenting for engagement.
As much as I respect RealLifeLore for reuploading this video with corrected information, I have an equal amount of disdain for those who used this situation to make exaggerated claims about RealLifeLore's credibility, claiming his content is unresearched and copy-pasted from sources like Wikipedia.
You can still see a number of inaccuracies in his other videos though. While it's good he's taken feedback and fixed this one which I can't deny being a good thing. Its worth noting he's still a creator based around entertainment. So it's likely in his best interest to create broad, incorrect statements to keep people watching and making ad revenue.
Edit: he also doesn't provide any sources. Makes me wonder where he gets this information.
@@SugmaDick pretty sure most people don’t give sources for their information. Not sure why, but they don’t.
@@SugmaDick That line fron the criticism video stuck with me, called him "Budget Wendover"
@@spyczech And Alan Fisher actually includes sources. Personally I have found Wendover videos very good, but the last one about the budget railway got me thinking about how his version didn’t totally reflect the reality
The very slow pace that California is making on high speed rail is a warning sign for the rest of the country. Any high speed railway project in the USA will get super expensive and move at a very slow pace. California is currently the only state building high speed rail right now, but it is going very slow. Texas and possibly Florida are considering high speed rail but neither of them have started yet, and I predict their high speed rail projects will move even slower then California's high speed rail.
If Texas and Florida actually decide to fund high speed rail I expect those project to move considerably faster. Those states are notorious for cutting corners, plus they have favorable geography.
@@jasond5232 Oh yeah I guess you're right about that. Also unlike California they don't have to deal with the thief of the land (The BofLM), which mainly targets western states.
Texas should do better because it's a private company doing it at their own expense which is how these things should be done. Airplanes are far superior for high speed transportation between urban areas in the USA, Canada and Australia simply because of the vast distances involved.
It would take the TGV 16 hours to go from Silicon Valley to New York, whereas a plane can do it in five or six hours.
Same for SV to LA/SD....you can fly there in an hour. There's no need for this train.
@@neutrino78x Airports and air traffic control systems don't get built by private companies at their own expense. I don't see how you expect trains to do that. To be like an airline, the TRAIN would be privately owned but the tracks and stations would be built by the government.
@@NozomuYume wrong, both should be run by the government, literally every country does that and have highspeed rails yet US never learned the lessons
Good on you bro, i almost never ever comment on anything but i did happen to catch a separate video counter pointing out everything from your first video and in all honesty i was never gonna watch any of ur videos again. I figured if all ur stats and subject matter was so flawed on this one video, it was likely that all ur videos were plagued with the same research. Thank God cuz i like ur format and ur narrating
Man, If anyone can drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 6 hours (and not just to the "entering Los Angeles county" sign on the grapevine), I would like to hire you to transport some very important blueprints for a pllanet destroying weapon in a Galaxy far far away
Im in lol
I live in stockton and the drive takes 5.5 or 6 to get to downtown LA depending on traffic and speed
Yeah from San Francisco it’s probably 7hrs to downtown LA going reasonably over the speed limit and leaving at low traffic times
The people that say 6 hours act like they aren’t stuck in traffic next to Six Flags at the 6 hour mark.
@@BanacaNation im usually passing dodger stadium at the 6 hour mark
Stuff like this makes the credibility of a channel much higher. Excellent Integrity, @RealLifeLore
Much props.... Love this channel even more. This shows your watchers that by you you listen to constructive advice and made appropriate changes. I wish more people were adult enough to admit mistakes. Great job! And great videos!
California has two senators. Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts have two each. Not exactly a surprise that federal funding is so much better for Acela.
Though there are other factors, notably that Acela is already operating and thus has a built-in base of support. Also, CAHSR is currently building in more conservative areas and their US representatives are not going to fight as hard for rail funding (or have as much influence with the Democratic congressional leadership).
As a European Railway Engineer I can see two major mistakes instantly with this project as you describe it. Construction should have started at either San Francisco or Los Angelas, for the simple reason of introducing the plane/car loving population to the advantages of high speed rail as soon as possible. As opening the central section first is likely to doom the project knowing the backward thinking of the US public towards trains.
Secondly building the line mile on mile on an elevated structure is plain stupid. It horrendously increases cost, takes much longer to construct & guarantees much higher running costs in constant maintenance of these elevated structures, especially in earthquake prone areas. It should have been built along the ground, with roads given bridges over or under the line, & a cheap high security fence to keep suicidal idiots out !!!
I would also guess that if the line ever gets complete, California will need another Nuclear Power Station just to provide the huge electrical demand that these electric high speed railway lines require. Not something I have seen mentioned anywhere !!!!!!!!!!!
As a Californian, my love for high speed rail is a Trojan horse for my love of nuclear fission power, the safest nonrenewable.
which sucks because both of those things have been used on california’s current railways, they’re just far too old-fashioned and slow, not to mention understaffed, to actually be significantly effective as commuter rails
As a Californian all I would say is the elevated platform looks awesome lol, I’m not sure why they did it that way I want to believe it has to do with the hundreds of miles of irrigated land it passes through or the geography and that the route goes through some of the largest renewable power plants in the country which are being expanded in the high desert, also not opposed to nuclear.
"Construction should have started at either San Francisco or Los Angelas... [sic]"
Which demonstrates that you don't understand California politics. Funding CA HSR required passing a state-wide bond measure voted upon by the whole electorate. The only way to gather enough votes was to get a lot of support *outside* the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles Metro area. The only way that was going to happen was if the Central Valley got their piece of the project FIRST. Because otherwise they'd be sure that it was just another big urban project that would never help them in their lifetimes.
The location of the rail line was a political issue, not an engineering one
Flying between the Bay area and LA is fine, I've done it a lot myself. The problem is that there's no room for growth. The slots at the existing airports are pretty much full. If you think it's expensive to build a rail line in California, try building a new airport. The cost of HSR relative to itself is irrelevant. The cost of HSR only matters as it relates to the cost of the alternatives.
"Flying between the Bay area and LA is fine, I've done it a lot myself."
Me too
"The problem is that there's no room for growth. The slots at the existing airports are pretty much full. "
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the coming eVTOLs. Joby is going to start service in Los Angeles in 2024. Battery powered flying taxis. MANY companies plan to bring these vehicles to market in the coming decade.
Plus airliners will burn a lot less fuel (if they even burn fossil fuel at all....short haul should be battery or H2 fuel cell in less than 20 years) and use Short Takeoff and Landing. Meaning better use of existing airports.
And adding one airport is far cheaper than the CAHSR at 100 billion. So it's a nope for me. I'm very proud I voted no in 2008 as a centrist Democrat. Yes on Biden in 2024, no on this colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
like expanding LAX ya right the cost of land alone would be incredibly expensive even somewhere like Ontario, it would still be a nightmare. I grew up along the route and I’m in my early 20s huge fan of the hsr I don’t want to drive 6-9 hours I just want to be on my phone, read a book, and enjoy the views.
@@CommonDaeze
"like expanding LAX ya right the cost of land alone would be incredibly expensive even somewhere like Ontario"
I mean it's not going to be 100 billion, come on now. If anything we would add a 4th airport in LA and a 4th in the Bay Area. Plus there are going to be a lot more eVTOL aircraft in the future, and STOL.....VTOL means no airstrip required, they can take off from any horizontal surface and land on any horizontal surface. STOL means they can use a smaller runway like Fullerton or Hawthorne or Bakersfield. The CEO of Joby said on 60 Minutes he's extremely confident that they can start eVTOL service in Los Angeles in 2024. That's not for going from SF to LA but it could make a trip to the airport five minutes instead of an hour. And it runs on batteries.
I think private sector innovation will let us greatly expand traffic at existing airports (with lower emissions) before we have to expand them.
And again...expanding one airport isn't going to be 100 billion.
"I don’t want to drive 6-9 hours"
Nobody does. We fly. You grew up here and don't fly around the state? Driving takes forever.
" I just want to be on my phone, read a book, and enjoy the views."
Yep, I do that on airplanes.
@@neutrino78x hopefully they also have high speed rail in the future. A combination of solutions will exist and be implemented just like renewable energy. There are a lot of cons for driving or flying that aren’t a problem with high speed rail. You can transport more people to more destinations at a faster rate than flying or driving, trains make stops so people can go to multiple destinations on one train, you can have multiple trains on one line, they are simply more efficient both at their function and energy consumption.
And they are simply cool like who doesn’t want to go hundred(s) of miles an hour through mountains in something powered by only electricity?
Let the poor people have the train and y’all can focus on the flying privately owned taxis and everyone wins.
@@CommonDaeze
"opefully they also have high speed rail in the future."
Sure but not at 100 billion. That's not reasonable and we don't even have the money as a state.
" There are a lot of cons for driving or flying that aren’t a problem with high speed rail. "
Like what, being able to go wherever there's an airport and not needing tracks? Being able to travel at high speed?
"You can transport more people to more destinations at a faster rate than flying or driving, "
Nope, especially not with CAHSR as currently presented. At least three times slower, by their numbers, probably four times slower.
"Let the poor people have the train"
I'm poor. My last job I made 21/hour in Silicon Valley. That's poor, trust me. The median salary here is 120k and the median home price is 1 million dollars.
And I fly all the time. It's very cheap to fly Bay Area to LA/SD. Southwest is less than $100 one way usually. The web makes it easy to choose between five competitors who fly that route. In your little world, there would only be one provider, the government.
The ticket price for CAHSR would be the same as a flight. Prop 1A forbids subsidizing it.
Thank you for always being thorough and responsible with your amazing educational and entertaining videos. You are one of the BEST content creators on RUclips and Nebula.
I love it when influences own their mistake and correc them.
Oh boy
It would be REALLY NICE if CALIFORNIA admitted ITS mistakes and CORRECTED them. That will never happen.
@@karnubawax how can they correct them?
Thanks for acknowledging the mistakes, its ok! Everyone makes mistakes. I absolutely love your channel and will continue binge watch your videos. Ciao
The real problem is that advocates rarely figure out the engineering. Crossing the Coast Ranges, earthquake faults and all, is simpler than crossing the Tehachapis, which also have earthquake faults and are steeper. Have any of the transit advocates ever driven I5? Imagine high speed rail up The Grapevine.
I think there is this fantasy people in the US have about how public transportation works and the reality is something that just isn't going to work in the US and California specifically. I used to live about an hour outside Stockholm in Sweden. While there was very good public transportation, it was far easier for me to drive to Gothenburg (the second largest city in Sweden) than to take the train all the way in to Stockholm, wait for the train to Gothenburg. Even if Sweden added high speed rail, it would be from Stockholm to Gothenburg. That's the same issue with high speed rail in California. I live an hour north of Union Station in Los Angeles. If I wanted to go visit my aunt in Palo Alto, it still would be faster to drive than to take high speed rail since it involves taking a train to Union Station to likely a station an hour away from my aunt. In Sweden and places with public transportation, those reliant on it have to make decisions about where they live and what they do based on public transportation. I had to drive people places because they couldn't take the train. The train was awesome to get into certain areas of Stockholm. But in LA, a train would have to be convenient to go everywhere otherwise it's incredibly limiting to those stuck only able to take public transportation. And I also remember racing for the last train back home in Stockholm otherwise I was stuck there for the whole night. That's what Americans wouldn't be able to stand - the massive limits caused by having to follow public transportation's schedules and stops.
We definitely have a fantasy about transit fixing all of our problems, but fortunately it doesn't need to. If HSR carries say 2,000 people per day between LA and San Francisco then that is 2,000 cars removed from the interstates which will massively help traffic. (Traffic is an exponential phenomenon where only a couple more cars turns free flowing bit slowish into a parkinglot)
The added bonus being that if you have a backbone transit like airplanes or HSR/decent inter city rail, then other local transit will have a good hub to center on to make easy transfers which boosts demand and makes the local transit better.
But even perfect™ transit won't be the best solution for every trip, especially with low density areas. But it would be nice to have an option to take a train i to my hometown and get picked up by family for vacations. (I don't expect this in my lifetime, its an hour+ from the interstate).
I agree Alyssa. As far as visiting your aunt, I highly recommend Southwest Airlines instead of driving! Takes an hour, just rent a car when you get here. (you can take Caltrain from San Jose or San Francisco in order to get to Palo Alto if you want.)
@@jasonreed7522 2000 peoples is a bit under stated, the different version of the TGV (french HSR) have a capacity beetween 300 and 500 passangers , with 400 train (not wagons, trains) on 10 lines
Thank you for being so honest and willing to listen to reasonable criticism. It's a trait that's hard to find these days. Calfornia HSR has...a lot of challenges, but I hope that they're able to complete it in the next few decades. The Pacific coast desperately needs HSR.
"he Pacific coast desperately needs HSR."
How so? We can already get from silicon valley to los angeles in 45-60 minutes. I'm flying down there next weekend in fact, to San Diego. If I took HSR as currently planned, it would be a four hour ride. Instead I'm taking a Boeing 737 and the trip will take me about an hour.
Classy move taking the old one down and taking the time to make a new, better and more accurate version!
Hope more big creators followed your steps!
Why re-up?